Adrian Kavanagh's Blog

Adrian Kavanagh, 8th April 2016 (Updated: 22nd April 2016)

As I used this model to successfully predict the Azerbaijan win at the 2011 contest,  Denmark’s win in 2013 and Sweden’s win in 2015,  I am going to use this to tease out who the likely qualifiers will be now that we know the running order for the two 2016 Eurovision semi-finals. Those of you who have read The Eurovision Handbook 2013 (as well as the 2014 edition of this – sadly low purchase levels of this notwithstanding…) will know that I used this same model to (sort of!) successfully predict most of the qualifiers for the 2013 and 2014 finals. This same model also succeeded in predicting most of the semi-final qualifiers in the 2015 contest.

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Adrian Kavanagh, 25th January 2016

In terms of working out who may win this year’s two Eurovision semi-finals/predicting which countries might qualify from these, various factors can be looked at, but the four most significant ones are:

• the song quality (which I use Eurovision betting odds as a means of trying to quantify this)
• past voting histories (involving the different countries – the semi-finalists themselves and the three Big 5/Host countries drawn to vote in these – that will be voting in the different semi-finals)
• position in the semi-final running order
• performance quality (both in the (public)  show itself and the previous night’s dress rehearsal/jury final, which is the contest that the Eurovision juries get to vote on).

As only a crystal ball can predict the quality and impact of the different acts’ Eurovision performances at this stage and as betting odds and draw/running order position details are not yet known, this analysis will just focus on past voting history as a means of determining which countries are likely to qualify for the 2016 Eurovision Final. (more…)

Adrian Kavanagh, 22nd May 2015

I have used this model to successfully predict the Azerbaijan win at the 2011 contest  and Denmark win in 2013, while this same model correctly identified 17 of the 20 qualifiers from this year’s semi finals. Now that we know the running order for the 2015 Eurovision Final I am going to use this to try and tease out who the likely winners will be of the 2015 contest will be. There are, however, a variety of factors that suggest that the 2015 Final model may not be as accurate as in previous years (and particularly before the new rules on combining jury votes and televotes were introduced at recent contests).

With the numbers crunched, Sweden and Russia – both with relatively good positions in the contest running order, a tendency to do well in terms of “friends and neighbours” and “diaspora” voting and very high rankings in the bookies odds – stand on top of the pile. Azerbaijan, Italy, Australia and Serbia also figure strongly here. But be wary.

• This model cannot take account of the impact of the actual performances on Final nights (jury show and public show).
• As the voting history statistics are based mainly on past televoting trends, the model cannot take account for the voting decisions of the highly influential professional juries, who have as much bearing on the result as the televotes have (if not more).
• There are no voting history statistics for Australia, so there is no real sense here as to how the Australian televote will go, nor is there any real sense as to where Australia is more likely to pick up Eurovision points.

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Adrian Kavanagh, 7th April 2015

As I used this model to successfully predict the Azerbaijan win at the 2011 contest and also Denmark’s win in 2013,  I am going to use this to tease out who the likely qualifiers will be now that we know the running order for the two 2014 Eurovision semi-finals. Those of you who have read The Eurovision Handbook 2013 (as well as the 2014 edition of this – sadly low purchase levels of this notwithstanding…) will know that I used this same model to (sort of!) successfully predict most of the qualifiers for the 2013 and 2014 final.

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Adrian Kavanagh, 26th January 2015

As I used this model to successfully predict the Azerbaijan win at the 2011 contest and also Denmark’s win in 2013,  I am going to use this to tease out who the likely qualifiers will be now that we know the running order for the two 2014 Eurovision semi-finals. Those of you who have read The Eurovision Handbook 2013 will know that I used this same model to (sort of!) successfully predict most of the qualifiers for the 2013 final.

(more…)