Is it indeed November?

Are we really a mere six months away from the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest in Kyiv?

We are!

And while it’s early in the selection cycle, things are slowly picking up. We have 43 ostensive participating countries broadcasters – though there is yet another chance to withdraw without penalty next month. We have our first two (internally selected) artists confirmed…though last year German announced artist was dropped within a couple of days, so anything can change until mid-March.

Cyprus will be sending Hovig, who’s lingered around their national selection in years past and is also an alumnus of the Greek X Factor franchise (he finished seventh). Just like last year, Swede Thomas G:son will contribute to the songwriting for our friends at CYBC. Hovig being a member of the Armenian diaspora cannot hurt Cyprus’ prospects.

Hovig’s unsuccessful 2015 Cypriot National Final Submission

The Netherlands have continued their run of announcing their act rather early. O’G3NE (oh gene) competed in the child labour franchise a few years back (finishing 11^th out of 17 entries). They have subsequently resurrected themselves as an adult girl group. O’G3NE won the 2014 edition of The Voice of Holland; since 2014 they’ve had a number one single and album.

We can’t yet ascertain to any extent Hovig or O’G3NE’s prospects for Kyiv: it is a song Contest, after all, and we don’t yet know either act’s songs or staging.

Their Winner’s Single, a #1

But we abacus clackers here at 58points are a bit perplexed at the Dutch once again announcing their act rather early in the Eurovision cycle. Here’s what they’ve done in recent years:

Year	Artists	Artist Announce Date	Song Début Date	Result
2013	Anouk	17 October 2012	11 March 2013	9th GF
2014	The Common Linnets	25 November 2013	12 March 2014	2nd GF
2015	Trijntje Oosterhuis	10 November 2014	11 December 2014	14th SF
2016	Douwe Bob	22 September 2015	04 March 2016	11th GF
2017	O’G3NE	29 October 2016	TBA	?

There is a distinct pattern: since 2013 the Dutch broadcasters consistently announce their artist early in the season. In every year save one they have waited until the end of the selection period to début the song. The exception is 2015, where both Trijntje and her entry were released well before any other entries—and look how that turned out for the Dutch.

There were a number of issues with Walk Along – the awkwardness of the English language title, Trijntje’s deer in the headlights panic onstage in Vienna (though she was vocally perfect) and the frocks-ups—but certainly Walk Along was an entry that at least initially was well received. That it ended up doing badly, particularly for an established, highly regarded act, is disappointing.

So the question we’ve been mulling over is:

To what extent does releasing an entry early predict Eurovision success—victory, to be precise?

We have purposely focused on winning rather than merely doing well. We’ll explain why in the next section.

Method

Like most of our analyses, we have focused on the televoting era, which began in Dublin in 1997. From 1997 onwards public voting (the National Audience in EBU-speak) has either selected the winner or constituted around half of an entry’s score in a Grand Final. We have focused on the Grand Final results only because we have had a few winners that finished second in their semi-finals who went on to win on Saturday night.

Why haven’t we looked at strong (top 5 or top 10) results rather than outright victory? First, winning matters: that is the nature of a contest, to win it. As well, looking at 5 times 20 (or 10 times 20) years of higher ranked entries would require triangulating a lot more data around artist announcement dates versus entry début dates—and very quickly we realised such data are difficult to find and verify. Finally, with scores in a Grand Final tending to clump together (no more than 3 songs in contention to win, followed by a few more clusters of entries with increasingly lower aggregate scores), the longer your list of “successful” entries, the lower scores get. And the less compelling “success” seems. So the winner takes it all.

61 years, 64 winners

Therefore we focused on the laureate from each year, of which we have 20. We looked at when the full entry was débuted, but we also looked at the selection method—in case selection was either predictive or confounding (turns out it is neither). Here’s what we found.

Timing does matter

Whilst an artist might be announced relatively early in the season, débuting your song later is clearly better to contend for victor. In 2014 Conchita Wurst was announced as Austria’s entry on 10 September 2013—before, in fact, her song had been selected. Rise Like a Phoenix was débuted on 18 March, mere days before the Heads of Delegations meeting in Copenhagen where 2014 entries were officially submitted. Similarly, 2011 winners Ell & Nikki won the Azeri national final on 11 February: Running Scared was launched a month later.

Conchita werks the preview party circuit in Riga

If we look at our 20 winning entries, the earliest any was débuted was late January (Denmark 2013 on the 26th). Six others were released in February, but THIRTEEN were released in March. Drilling down further into the March releases, two were released in the first week, eight in the second week, and three in the third or fourth week. That makes the second week of March the sweet spot.

Here are the data:

Year	Artist	Country	Song	Song Début	Selection
1997	Katrina & the Waves	UK	Love Shine a Light	08 March	Televote
1998	Dana International	Israel	Diva	14 February	Internal
1999	Charlotte Nilsson	Sweden	Take Me to Your Heaven	27 February	Mixed
2000	The Olsen Brothers	Denmark	Fly on the Wings of Love	19 February	Mixed?
2001	Tanel Padar & Dave Benton & 2XL	Estonia	Everybody	03 February	Jury
2002	Marie N	Latvia	I Wanna	02 March	Televote
2003	Sertab Erener	Turkey	Every Way That I Can	Sometime in March*	Internal
2004	Ruslana	Ukraine	Wild Dances	25 March	Internal
2005	Helena Paparizou	Greece	My Number One	02 March	Televote
2006	Lordi	Finland	Hard Rock Hallelujah	10 March	Televote
2007	Marija Šerifoviç	Serbia	Molitva	08 March	Mixed
2008	Dima Bilan	Russia	Believe	09 March	Mixed
2009	Alexander Rybak	Norway	Fairytale	21 February	Mixed
2010	Lena	Germany	Satellite	12 March	Televote
2011	Ell & Nikki	Azerbaijan	Running Scared	13 March	Internal
2012	Loreen	Sweden	Euphoria	10 March	Mixed
2013	Emmelie de Forest	Denmark	Only Teardrops	26 January	Mixed
2014	Conchita Wurst	Austria	Rise Like a Phoenix	18 March	Internal
2015	Måns Zemerlõw	Sweden	Heroes	14 March	Mixed
2016	Jamala	Ukraine	1944	21 February	Mixed

*Unable to confirm precise date

Sertab’s EPIC preview video

Strategy

It is unsurprisingly, then, that several national selections are timetabled to be wrap up in the first fortnight of March. This makes sense for several reasons:

• For a multi-semi-final series, entries can build momentum
• Entries can be workshopped and tweaked
• Late one-off national finals generate buzz in the absence of earlier releases (a paradox)
• Broadcasters can synchronise their campaign with the accelerating interest among hard-core Contest fans
• Clever broadcasts with an internal selection get to hear (and see) other entries, which can create bandwidth to tweak yours. Also known as the Guy Sebastian principle.

When so many went ballad, Australia went uptempo—and top 5

In Sweden, Melodifestivalen entries are submitted and allocated to semi-finals months in advance. But rather than schedule their final in February, Melodifestivalen is timed to climax two or three days before the Heads of Delegations meeting in March. While there are usually perhaps only two or three entries considered contenders for the Swedish golden ticket going into their final, much of the Eurosphere is transfixed by the time the national final hits Stockholm.

Loreen’s Melodifestivalen semi-final performance – diamond in the rough	Loreen’s Eurovision Grand Final performance – tweaked to perfection

20 years of televoting

Of course it isn’t only a question of timing or strategy. Around one third of any year’s entries are débuted in March: only one of them wins in May. Entries with purposeful, nuanced campaigns will not win if there’s another entry preferred, on balance, with the juries and voting public.

The 2017 Eurovision Song Contest will be the 21^st edition with the public helping to select a winner. That’s two decades! In 2016 a new equal-aggregate method was used to select a winner, which brought an exciting climax to an already well produced Contest. Perhaps the best organized Eurovision ever.

The rules for 2017, however, allow for the proportion between public and jury votes scores to be unequal:

The points of the National Juries and the National Audiences shall be combined according to a ratio which is determined by the EBU subject to the Reference Group approval. For example, if the ratio is 50-50, the points of the National Jury carry the same weight as the points of the National Audiences (sic).

Is this in response to have two consecutive winners that were not the public’s first choice in 2015 and 2016? Perhaps. We look forward to seeing the 2017 winning entry once it’s débuted in March… 🙂