Happy Eurovision Final Day!
As I write this, I’m coming upon about 2.5 hours before show time.
The two semifinals went about as I expected, but now I look forward to the Grand Final. It looks to be a two-horse race at this point, between Finland 🇫🇮 and Australia 🇦🇺, but unlike the situation that Finland was in back in 2023 with Sweden 🇸🇪, I don’t think either one of them has this Contest in the bag. (Looking back at 2023, Sweden still had an extremely strong chance of winning even with Finland’s charge, especially once the jury points were awarded.) I think a lot is going to depend on how the jury vote falls, because while I expect Australia and Finland to likely be contending for the jury vote win, we don’t know if one of them is going to dominate the jury vote in the same way Loreen did in 2023 or Nemo did in 2024. Both Australia and Finland have extremely strong stagings and equally strong vocals. Will they split the juries as well? It’ll be interesting to see if either of these entries can break 300 points from the jury vote. (The maximum a country can earn from the juries is 408 points, if they got 12 points from each of the other 34 juries. I don’t expect that to happen.)
The televote, however, is going to be an even bigger factor this year, because there are several countries that could be contending to win the televote, in addition to Finland and Australia: Greece 🇬🇷, Bulgaria 🇧🇬, Moldova 🇲🇩, Romania 🇷🇴, Ukraine 🇺🇦, and Israel 🇮🇱. This might be the most competitive televote in a Grand Final in quite some time. I’d be surprised if any of the televote totals come even close to 300. (The maximum a country can earn from the televote is 420 points, if they got 12 points from each of the other 34 countries and won the Rest of the World vote.) There’s a real possibility that the televote winner might be nowhere near the top of the jury vote and they end up playing a spoiler in deciding the winner. And we get our first compromise winner since 2019 (where they win neither the jury vote nor the televote, but do well enough in both to get the most points).
I would love to see Finland win, but I am fully mentally preparing myself for an Australia win. And to be fair, Australia did have to send their answer to Celine Dion in order to be in the conversation. Well played, Australia. But Finland getting its second win twenty years after its first would be so poetic. And with such a beautiful song, too!
And if Australia does win, we’re guaranteed to see a repeat of the hosting scramble from 2023, as Australia will not be able to host due to both its status as an Associate Member of the EBU as well as the huge time zone difference from the rest of Europe. Another country will have to host on their behalf, and while it would likely be a Big Four/Five country, if it was Australia and Finland at 1 and 2, respectively, what if they had the ultimate consolation prize and they both got to share hosting duties? (Finland physically hosting it, but the broadcasters from both countries working together and celebrating two great entries from the year before.)
See you after the Grand Final!
