Eurovision FACTory

Fact Friday has been a tradition for years! I'm named Eurovision FACTory for a reason, after all. Today, some curios facts about the running order: The last previous times United Kingdom closed the final, in 1966 and 2014, Austria won the contest. Denmark makes history as it's the first time ever they open a show. They haven't done it once since their first participation in 1957.

A few days after the running order reveal, I usually make my first prediction. The second and final one follows after the rehearsals, but isn't revealed by me until after the semi finals. That is because of my superstition that I jinx stuff. This year I slightly altered my method. I added the country's overall qualification rate, the televoting only since it's relevant for this year, and the record of the running order position, taking them into account. Here's my prediction for the first semi final: 1. Norway country Q rate: 80% (75% in SF 1) televoting Q rate: 87% running order Q rate: 54% (36% in SF 1) Norway opened the semi final in 2018 and that didn't hurt them at all. This year, it's the same. I don't see why they shouldn't qualify, there no(r)way this happens. Openers don't do well in the first semi final, but Norway should be able to overcome that obstacle since they have only two non-qualifications with the televoters which is an amazin...

The death slot is not what you think. As we can see, 11 is the worst slot in the televoting, while in the jury vote it's both 2 and 5 (But that is irrelevant since the juries are gone). 14, 8 and 12 have the most individual qualifications. This time it's 12 that has equal qualifications in both semi finals, while 8 is doing better in the second one. Of course, 18 and 19 are doing better by percentage, but they don't appear this year. I'm sorry if there are any mistakes since that was really a lot of work.

And no, number 2 is NOT the worst! As you can see, number 2 used to do very well until 2012, with an amazing record of 70%. 14 did even better, having a perfect streak! The real death slot back then was 11, only qualifying twice in the second semi final. Other slots that rarely qualified were 3 - 5, the latter two only being successful in one of the semi finals. That's also the reason for their low qualification rates in one semi final. Interestingly, 8 - 12 used to struggle a lot in the second semi final, none of them qualifying more than four times. 8 and 9 have improved a lot since 2013. Also, openers are more lucky in the second semi final, while the contest opener tends to struggle more often. Between 2008 and 2012, only one opener qualified from the first semi final (and that was thanks to juries). 4 and 13 also do a lot better in the second semi final, while 9 and 10 are more successful in the first. 14 is equal in both semi finals, the only number to do so (hoping that this...

This is the running order of the first semi final (in brackets the spot I predicted): 1. Norway (5)  2. Malta (1) 3. Serbia (6) 4. Latvia (7) 5. Portugal (2) 6. Ireland (4) 7. Croatia (3) 8. Switzerland (9) 9. Israel (8) 10. Moldova (10) 11. Sweden (15) 12. Azerbaijan (12) 13. Czechia (11) 14. Netherlands (14) 15. Finland (13) First of all, Serbia and Latvia are back-to-back, yay! Got that one right! It's the second year in a row Serbia got that slot, though (and the third time since 2018). I was certain Norway wouldn't open, but oh well... Malta got the Latvia 2022 treatment, it seems. They both had songs with a saxophone. Predicting a woman performing 5th was spot on, it was just the wrong one. I was unsure about Ireland and Croatia, two rock-ish songs, being back-to-back in my prediction (which is why I had two versions of it), but it indeed happened. I predicted three countries on their exact spot. Switzerland and Israel are reversed. I also got the pairs Azerbaijan - Czech...

With the removal of juries in the semi finals, the jury qualification rates no longer matter. I still share them with you so you can compare them. The biggest discrepancies are Malta and Poland. One loved by juries, the other not. Poland will profit from the televote only, while Malta might struggle. Ukraine will keep their 100% jury record. If not for them, Ukraine wouldn't have qualified in 2012. Only one participanting country has a perfect record with the televoters: Sweden. This disrupts the myth of them being a jury pet. Another country doing better with juries is Estonia. Two of their qualifications, 2011 and 2013, were because of them. It's ironic that all three of Romania's non-qualifications were due to the televoters since they had a perfect streak until then. Interestingly, all three would have qualified with the juries only. Of course, Croatia is a special case in 2021. It was both a jury and televote qualifier, but still didn't manage to qualify, which is ...

See below the qualification rates of every country since 2004. Remember that from 2004 - 2007, there was only one semi final. Ten countries were pre-qualified, these (as well as the host country from 2008 onward) are represented by the blue collum. We see that 13 (!) countries have 3 or less non-qualifications, which is pretty impressive considering we've had semi finals for almost 20 years. The upper four countries haven't competed for a long time. Serbia & Montenegro (CS) doesn't exist anymore, but their amazing run will forever remain unmatched. If we split them by semi finals, these qualification rates look different. We notice that Latvia has never qualified from the first semi final before, so their draw doesn't look good for them. It's the opposite for Sweden, who have a perfect streak in this semi final. Things also look good for Australia and Greece who were never unlucky in the second semi final.

With us getting the running order of the semi finals possibly at the end of March or beginning of April, I made a prediction of it (which has been a tradition ever since 2014 when I started out on Facebook) This is NOT my personal running order though. If you're new, here's a few explanations: In general, I try to alternate male and female acts (if possible) and separate songs in native language (except if they're in the majority). I also have two rules: Each country has to be on a different spot than the previous year (e.g. Netherlands can't be put on #8) and I separate countries that start with the same letter cause it's my pet peeve (for that reason I hated the running order of the first semi final last year.) Semi final 1 The first half was really difficult to make due to the many male groups/bands. There's two versions because I couldn't decide. 1. Malta/Ireland: Ireland was one of the countries I considered as opener (I mean, they sing "We are O...

 ...the saddest day in Eurovision history. It was the worst case scenario we could all think of, and sadly, on this day three years ago, our fears unfortunately became a reality. Let's remember all songs that never got the chance to be performed on the Eurovision stage. It's sad that we will never know who would've won. Albania – Fall from the sky Armenia – Chains on you Australia – Don't break me Austria – Alive Azerbaijan – Cleopatra Belarus – Da vidna Belgium – Release me Bulgaria – Tears getting sober Croatia – Divlji vetre Cyprus – Running Czech Republic – Kemama Denmark – Yes Estonia – What love is Finland – Looking back France – The best in me Georgia – Take me as I am Germany – Violent thing Greece – Superg!rl Iceland – Think about things Ireland – Story of my life Israel – Feker libi Italy – Fai rumore Latvia – Still breathing Lithuania – On fire Malta – All of my love Moldova – Prison Netherlands – Grow North Macedonia – You Norway – Attention Poland – Empires...

Welcome to ESC Factory, the blog of a stats freak, fact machine and above all, Eurovision enthusiast since 2005 who's known to be brutally honest. You may or may not know me from my instagram page esc.factory. To celebrate its sixth anniversary, I am now launching this new blog where I will share unique scoreboards and lots of statistics/analysis! You will also find many of my old instagram posts neatly arranged and summarized in this blog to make them easier accessible. Your ESC Factory