Eurovision's pre Rehearsals Essential Pack

 

It has been a long time since I have posted something and boy it feels good to be back and running! Last year has been crazy and  I wanted to wait a bit longer before starting my blog for Eurovision 2021. 

I do reckon that 2021 will have a few hiccups as well, but hopefully will not impact the Contest. In this post I will try to summarise what we know so far and give a few key points for pre-rehearsals betting. Here we go...

What we know so far: 

EBU has opted for Scenario B, which means that all or most of the participants will sing live from Ahoy Arena.

 It will be a socially distanced event and delegations have to produce a live - on - tape performance in case they cannot make it to Rotterdam or they have to self isolate. 

There will be a reduced audience in the Arena. ( Personally doubt about it)

For the first time delegations can use pre - recorded backing vocals, with no limits on the number of backing singers, allowing better staging for songs that are based on a choreography.

How all these impact the Contest?

My biggest fear so far is that some of the delegations might not be able to travel to Rotterdam and instead we will watch the live - on - tape performance. That is a game changer. Those who watched San Remo will know that Irama, one of the performers had to self isolate because of contact tracing and the producers used a recorded rehearsal. He was close to Top-3 but I do think that his absence has impacted his ranking. All other artists were able to change costumes and interact with the presenters and the TV audience. His clip felt kind of soulless.

Pre recorded performance could be a burden for some delegations that do not have the means or the experience to stage one...Armenia has already withdrawn from the Contest because it did not have the time and means to produce a song. If I had to guess, I do believe that at least 2-3 more countries will not show up in Rotterdam and will opt for the Tape just for the sake of participating. I wish to be proved wrong.

The backing vocals is another game changer. Who will use them more efficienlty to produce something innovative and out of the Eurovision thinking box? This aspect might be the Wow factor for this year, similar to Sweden 2015 or Ukraine 2016.

Sharing some thoughts about pre-rehearsal betting:

In this section I will share some principles that I use every year and help me having profits every year for the last decade.

1. Wait for all songs to be revealed before start betting. The majority of the favorites and the power houses all reveal their entries in the last few days. Wait to hear/see all of them before start betting heavily. In this Contest you can find opportunities to bet until the final results are revealed during the final. The false favorites are flowering this time of the year...

There are still 17 entries to be revealed in the next days...Use timing wisely

2. This year we have many returning artists because of what happened last year. Be aware of the anchor effect! Sending a good entry in 2020 doesn't mean that 2021 will be the same. The only returning artists that do better the second time are the ones that failed to qualify the first one...

 Iceland would probably have been the Winner last year. Can they win this year? Maybe...But leading the Winner market @ 7.4 without having listened to an entry that comes from a nation that has never won and finished 2nd just twice in their history is not exactly the definition of a value bet...

3. The lack of Eurovision parties. The backing vocals might reduce the impact of those, but we will end up going in rehearsals without having heard  some of the songs performed live. Less data to collect means smaller amount of bets to be placed. Patience is a virtue. 

4. The impact of the lack of audience that will affect  the uplifting entries or the ones that will be relying to the creation of some intimacy. I reckon this will be the year we will see some holograms of fans/people  on stage or on the background to help the contestants. 

5. I have a feeling that the winner of this year will be an uplifting entry. It has been a very tough year and most of us feel tired, depressed, stressed, trapped and Eurovision will be a Saturday night that finally people can party and forget all those horrible months. It is something that people need and are looking forward to. This is just a gutt feeling.

17 entries are left to be revealed and I don't think we have listened/seen the winner yet. I will be posting on a weekly basis for the next few weeks and will do a basic anaysis on every participant when we will know the running order of the Semis. 

It feels nice to be back to the pre-Eurovision routine!