National broadcasters for Spain and Belgium have now complained to the competition’s organisers, the European Broadcasting Union, after Israel won the public vote by a large margin.
RTVE, Spain’s public broadcaster, and VRT, the Flemish broadcasting company, are demanding that organisers investigate the televoting system, which allows voters at home to vote up to 20 times for a small cost charged to each vote by text or phone call.
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The EBU confirmed that RTVE and VRT had been in contact and said it took the complaints “seriously”.
Martin Green, the director of Eurovision, said: “It is important to emphasise that the voting operation for the Eurovision Song Contest is the most advanced in the world and each country’s result is checked and verified by a huge team of people to exclude any suspicious or irregular voting patterns.”
Politics aside, can someone explain to an American why Israel is in it? Kinda seems weird to have a non-European country in Eurovision.
It cannot be explained by putting politics aside. Having Israel be there is in itself a political choice.
This comment is really nice summation of why Israel are still in the ESC, but Russia were booted.
Tl;dr: Israel’s national broadcaster is still (kinda) independent, so the European Broadcasting Union are keen to protect that. Russia’s national broadcaster has been entirely subsumed by Putin’s government, so no longer fulfills the requirements of EBU membership.
That is a lie on part of the ESC, it’s been documented and until recently was still up on their website that they booted Russia because it invaded Ukraine. When asked why Israel was allowed to participate in 2024, they came up with this explanation and changed their story re: Russia.
Israel is a member of the EBU (European Broadcasting Union), which organizes the song contest. This is also why geographically non-European countries like Azerbaijan and Georgia can participate.
Being very pedantic, small parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan are within the commonly agreed borders of Europe (the Georgian parts that fall on the Terek river basin and the Azeri Quba-Xaçmaz region)
I see, thank you for the explanation!
Australia is an even a weirder choice.
Eurovision is huge in Australia. People get up in the middle of the night to watch it. So in 2016, the contest’s 60th anniversary, they allowed Australia to compete for funsies.
Everyone agreed they understand Eurovision perfectly so they were allowed to stay.
I am just waiting for the day, Australia wins and everybody in Europe has to watch the ESC in the middle of the day
Brilliantly for us in actual Europe, they compete under the rule that should they win, the competition will still be hosted here in Europe. They have to pay for it, but we don’t have to get up early to watch it.
We were mistaken as the entry for Austria and nobody wants to admit that mistake
Yeah one day I ended up playing soccer for the Austrian soccer team because I went through the wrong door and didn’t want to let anyone down
Same applies to football (soccer), the Israeli teams cannot play against their neighbors for obvious reasons unless it’s a World Cup match. Those clowns should make peace.