We know already 9/41 songs and that number will increase to 13/14 by this Saturday.
San Remo was the topic of the week.
Mahmood and Blanco will represent Italy with 'Brividi', the first song that will be among the contenders in May. Italy is currently leading the winner market @3.90 which is noticeably short keeping in mind that we still haven't heard 32 songs and Italy's running order is not decided by the producer but is a result of a random draw.
The fact that most of the already known songs in Semi-Finals and National Finals to come are underwhelming apart from Ochman's 'River' for Poland has led to discussions and complaints regarding the quality level of this year's contest.
I did some research in the past five contests that were held with the 50/50 voting system and checked the fate of the first ten and ten last entries revealed each year, trying to detect any patterns, plus the revealing order of the Top-3 of each year and here are the findings:
First Ten songs revealed each year
Instead of 50 songs, the list contains 53 songs because some were revealed the same day and as a result there are twelve songs in 2019 and eleven in 2018.
Out of these 53 songs, 34 were performed in the Final. If the Big-5 are removed from that list, we have 18/37 entries qualifying to the Final. The percentage though is gradually improving year after year:
2016: 3/9 - 4/10
2017: 1/5 - 6/10
2018: 3/7 - 7/11
2019: 5/8 - 9/12
2021: 6/8 - 8/10
Out of these 53 entries, there are only two podium results: France finishing second last year and Italy second as well in 2019.
Last Ten songs revealed each year
The list one more is slightly bigger containing 55 songs. 35 of them were performed in the final. Removing the Big-5 and host countries we are left with 31/51 qualifying entries.
2016: 9/10 - 7/8
2017: 5/12
2018: 7/10
2019: 6/10 - 5/9
2021: 8/13 - 7/12
The difference between the two ends in qualifying percentage is quite significant with 48.6% vs 60.8% in favour of the last entries revealed.
The podium results are six, three times more than the first ten, including a win:
First: Israel 2018
Second: Australia 2016, Bulgaria 2017
Third: Austria 2018, Russia 2019, Switzerland 2021
The other significant finding is the average ranking. It is 14.6 for the first ten (Big-5/hosts included) and 10.9 for the last ten (Big-5/hosts included).
The numbers support the theory that most of the favourites are revealed towards the end of the season.
Podium Average Revealing Order
I have also examined the revealing order of the podium songs and again the numbers lean towards the last part of the season.
The average revealing order for the Winner is 26. The earlier was Ukraine in 2016 (13) and the latest was Israel in 2018 (39).
The rest are Portugal/17 (24), Netherlands/19 (31) and Italy/21 (23)
The average revealing order for the second place is 22.
Australia/16 (36), Bulgaria/17 (42), Cyprus/18 (22), Italy/19 (7), France/21 (3)
And finally, the average revealing order for the third place is 30.
Russia/16 (28), Moldova/17 (16), Austria/18 (36), Russia/19 (39), Switzerland/21 (31)
National Final vs Internal Selection for a podium finish
The last thing I wanted to check is if the selection process affects the result as well.
The internally selected songs are more successful with 9/15 and the National Final winners have 6/15 podiums.
Surprisingly, the National Final Winners have three wins and Internally Selected have two.
2018 was the only year where all three songs were selected internally.
Last year was the first time where winner and runner up were National Final winners.
Numbers sometimes do not mean anything, and they don't give the whole picture but might give you some helpful clues.
If you can read this sentence, you made it till the end!
