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.

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.”

  • nomy@lemmy.zip
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    13 hours ago

    Remember how big American Idol was? How many careers it launched? How many spin offs it spawned?

    Americans would eat that shit up if we were involved.

    • redwattlebird@lemmings.world
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      7 hours ago

      Well… They had Madonna on some years ago and that failed spectacularly when she lip synced the entire act…

      I don’t think Eurovision would work with America in it because of American exceptionalism. That’s why you’ll stick to your national song contests.

    • shoo@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      Oh I’m sure, but it seemed like a different beast. American Idol was really tuned into the characters and personal drama, there was never that much meta-drama. Almost like the Super Bowl vs. World Cup