Adrian Kavanagh's Blog

Adrian Kavanagh, 9th May 2016

One trend that seems to be fairly consistent across Eurovision Song Contests relates to the often poor performances by countries that have won the contest two years beforehand and thus hosted it the year before, in what many people refer to as the curse of last year’s hosts. The reason for this trend is unknown, but it may be down to a simple averaging out process in that countries that achieve significant success in the contest are, on the law of averages, due a poor result soon after this! It may also reflect a (subconscious) desire amongst the Eurovision voters not to award another victory to a country so soon after they have won the contest – a desire that may have become especially pronounced following Ireland’s run of four victories between 1992 and 1996! It may also be down to the level of effort put in by the country themselves – in what we might term the My Lovely Horse scenario, this country consciously/subconsciously makes an effort to avoid picking a song that could win the contest for them, which hence could involve them hosting the contest (and having to take on the financial costs associated with this) so soon after having just hosted it the year before. Furthermore, while a country may put a big effort into selecting a strong entrant in the year that country is hosting the contest, they may (consciously or unconsciously) relax these efforts in the following year, with a poor result in the contest ensuing as a result.

The incidence of the curse of last year’s host has increased in recent years, mainly due to the increased numbers of competitors in the contest allowing for the increased prospect of a very poor result for these former hosts. For instance, four of the previous years’ hosts failed to make it out of a Eurovision semi-final in the year after they hosted the contest (namely Latvia in 2004, Serbia in 2009, Norway in 2011 and Denmark in 2015). The ramping up of the competitiveness levels within the contest over the past decade, or so, has to be another factor here.

It is also worth noting that determining whether a country’s result amounts to these being “cursed” depends on what that country’s results in the contests would normally, as well as the period in which these contests are taking place. Given Russia’s string of very strong results in the 2000s, their 11th place in the 2010 Final amounts to a poor result for that country, although a similar placing would probably be deemed as a very good result by most other Eurovision countries, including a number of recent winners such as Germany, Finland and Latvia. There’s also a temporal dimension here. The United Kingdom’s 12th place in the 1999 Final would have been deemed as a poor result for that country at that period of time, given the country’s run of strong results in the decades prior to the 1999 contest. However, a similar result for the United Kingdom in 2000s would be viewed as a more than acceptable one given that country’s poor run of form during the present century. The same thing could be said about The Duskeys 11th place result for Ireland in the 1982 Final – a result that was disappointing given Ireland’s consistent run of strong results during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. However a 11th place result in a Eurovision Final would have be viewed as a very good result for Ireland during the 2000s.

Finally, it must be noted that one country seems to have especially suffered from the curse of last year’s hosts more than any other country during this period and that country is Norway, in keeping with that country’s oscillating fortunes at the contest, with a series of very poor results for two Norwegian acts in the years after Norway has hosted the contest. This included one nils points last placed finish in 1997, as well as failure to qualify from the semi-final 2011. That said, Denmark’s record is not much better. Having finished last in the 2001 Final after hosting the contest in 2000, Denmark exited the contest in 2015 at the semi-final stage after having hosted the contest last year in Copenhagen. So, the curse lives on. Personally, I hope the same rule does not apply in 2016, as I really like Austria’s entry this year, but only time will tell whether Zoë Straub can avoid the curse of last year’s hosts or not.

Tags: Eurovision

This entry was posted on May 9, 2016 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Eurovision. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.