The winner of the Barbara Dex Award for the worst outfit at the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest has been announced, and the (un)lucky recipient is Eye Cue from Macedonia.

Not content with their entry “Lost & Found” giving us at least three songs in one, the Macedonian stage performance featured a series of unfortunate fashion choices for lead singer Marija and her backing group, most notably a clingy pink/grey sweater and hotpants combination that seemed specifically designed to highlight certain aspects of Marija’s shape with minimal subtlety.

The runner-up in this year’s Barbara Dex Award was Jessica Mauboy from Australia, while Belgium’s Sennek took third place.

Named after the self-designed outfit worn by Belgium’s 1993 representative and based on a public internet vote, the Barbara Dex Award has been presented since 1997 to the singer or artist deemed to have made the biggest fashion mistake at that year’s Eurovision Song Contest. While the voters occasionally seem to have missed the point of the award (giving it to t.A.T.u. in 2003 and Verka Serduchka in 2007, for example), it’s hard to argue with their choice of the Macedonian dual fashion crime this year.

We should have known, really – the clues were already there in the preview video…

all images from eurovision.tv

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Israel has won the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest!

“Toy” by Netta, the long-time bookmakers’ and fans’ favourite, won the grand final on Saturday night ahead of its recent usurper in the betting markets, “Fuego” by Eleni Foureira representing Cyprus. It was a dominant victory in the end, with Israel scoring 529 points to Cyprus’s 436. The rest of the top five was made up by Austria, Germany and Italy, all of whom exceeded 300 points.

Cesár Sampson from Austria had been the surprise leader after the jury voting, but he swiftly fell down the scoreboard as Netta took a clear win in the televote ahead of Eleni.

Last place in the final was taken by the home country Portugal and the song “O jardim”, albeit with a fairly substantial 39 points – nothing to be ashamed of there.

You can see the full scoreboard below. More reaction and response over the next few days, including what will surely be a long and intriguing View from San Francisco from our US-based Israeli writer Shi!

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The final of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest is nearly upon us, and as always, one way of adding a bit of spice to proceedings is to have a bet or two on what’s going to happen. Unlike the semi-finals, today is where the mainstream bookmakers also turn up with some interesting markets. This post will help to navigate some of the bets available to you for tonight’s show – though as always, you should take anything I say as information and not an active recommendation!

Our good friends at Sofabet have a handy guide for you if you need some help understanding betting odds – I’ll be using the European-style decimal odds throughout this piece. All odds are correct at time of writing but liable to change as the day progresses. You have been warned!

So let’s start with the obvious question: who’ll be the winner tonight? Eleni Foureira from Cyprus picked up momentum after her first rehearsal and is now seen as the clear favourite – the best odds you’ll get for her to win are a remarkably short 2.38 (Betfred). Her nearest rival in that respect, Netta from Israel, is currently trading at around 4.0 (Boylesports) at best, which is a little shorter than she was a few days ago – that may reflect a strong performance at last night’s jury final.

You might want to hedge your bets by going each-way, which means betting on a song to win and also to finish in the top 4 (or 3 or 5, depending on the site – make sure to check!). For example, reliable ESC performer Sweden probably won’t win tonight, but odds of 21.0 (various) make them an interesting each-way punt. Further out, Michael Schulte from Germany (26.0 at Black Type) has gained a lot of momentum in the last few days, or you might fancy an each-way nibble at the cheesiest entry of the night, DoReDos from Moldova, at 67.0 (Paddy Power and others).

Bet your hat on a DoReDo?

If you’d rather eliminate the potentially confusing each-way option, you can just bet directly on a country to finish in the top 4. Ryan O’Shaughnessy from Ireland has been perhaps the biggest mover in the market since the final running order was announced, and while an eighth Irish victory seems highly unlikely, odds of 3.1 (BetStars) are available for “Together” to suck up the ballad vote tonight and sneak into the top 4. The aforementioned fun-loving Moldovans are available at 9.0 (William Hill) if you believe Europe will fall for the charms of their Carry On Up The Chișinău performance, or you could take a punt on Waylon from the Netherlands to repeat his high-scoring antics from 2014 as part of the Common Linnets – odds of 29.0 (BetStars) say he’ll reach the top 4 tonight.

The top 10 market is an interesting one, not least because the number of points needed to reach that particular mark on the scoreboard can vary wildly – just remember 2015, when Bojana from Serbia grabbed a top 10 spot despite scoring very little outside her obvious target audience. So where’s the value here? If you think returning hero Alexander Rybak from Norway has enough residual love among Europe’s televoters to at least hit the upper reaches of the scoreboard, you can currently get 1.8 (BetVictor) for him to achieve a top 10 finish. Ukraine have been given the opening spot in the contest, and they have a bit of recent form in that respect, finishing 6th from the same position in 2014. If you think Melovin can repeat history to a sufficient extent to make the top 10 tonight, odds of as long as 4.0 (Boylesports) are available. And speaking of repeating history, Australia have never failed to reach the top 10 on their three contest appearances to date. Following some shaky rehearsals, Jessica Mauboy is surprisingly far out to make it four out of four for the Aussies – you can back her at 2.1 (Bet365 and others).

Rybak: Still pulling in the crowds

There are several group bets available for the grand final, too. Bulgaria are the clear favourites in the Top Balkan market (1.4 at Betway is the best you’ll get for them); if I say the nearest challenger is Albania (8.0, Bet365), that gives you some indication of how uncompetitive the market is. Top Scandinavian country is a far more interesting proposition: if you think frontrunner Sweden is overrated, you could punt on Norway at 3.5 (Betway), or you could plump for Saara Aalto from Finland to leave all the boys behind and take the Nordic crown – odds of 9.0 are available at various sites for that outcome. There’s also a non-regional group market for the Top Big 5 country, too. No one is inside 2.0 here, with France leading the way at 2.2 (Betfred). Given their excellent starting position and the potential for the other “big” countries to flop, you could do worse than bet a few currency units on Italy, which you can grab for odds as long as 7.0 (Betfair Sportsbook).

A few sites are also offering head-to-heads or match-ups. The advantage here is it doesn’t matter where your pick finishes on the final scoreboard in absolute terms, just as long as it finishes higher the other country in the bet. For example, if you feel Eleni has been overrated by the fan hype, you can get 2.62 for Israel to beat Cyprus tonight. You may think the Bulgarian team have put in enough groundwork to finish ahead of Mikolas from the Czech Republic – 2.00 is available for that outcome. Alternatively, if you believe AWS’s screamo schlager will prove more popular than the fun but dated DoReDos offering, odds of 3.0 are available for Hungary to beat Moldova. All of these (and more) can be found on Bet365, but several other sites are offering similar markets, so do check them out.

There’s also an interesting little market at Betfair Exchange for the lowest score, i.e. how many points will be scored by tonight’s last-placer. The options are under 10 points (currently 1.62), 10-15 points (2.44) or over 15 points (1.76). The latter could be worth a punt if you believe this year really is as all over the place as it looks.

Stormy times ahead?

And last of all (appropriately enough), there’s the small matter of who will occupy that last place on the scoreboard. The “big 5 + host” automatic qualifiers are always at risk of taking home the wooden spoon, as they haven’t been subjected to quality control in the same way as the qualifying semi-finalists. As such, it’s no surprise to see the United Kingdom leading the way in this market at 3.0 (Betfred and others). If you think SuRie’s vocal strength and natural charm will persuade enough people (especially jurors) to at least lift the UK to Joe & Jake levels of mediocrity, you might want to consider the host country Portugal (13.0, Paddy Power) or even the Spanish lovebirds Amaia and Alfred with their early slot in the running order (15.0, Boylesports). If a semi-final qualifier does fall through the cracks and end up at the bottom of the pile, meanwhile, it could be Slovenia – they almost did exactly that in 2014, after all, and Lea Sirk shares the Spanish fate of an unfortunately early place in the running order. Odds of 5.50 (Ladbrokes) say that Ljubljana will be the destination of the 2018 wooden spoon.

As always, you can see an overview of the odds in most of the available markets at Oddschecker. Wherever you place your money and however you watch the show tonight, I hope you have a wonderful and profitable evening. May the best song win – and your best bets, too!

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In the early hours of the morning, the producers announced the running order for the grand final of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest, which is as follows:

So what can we glean from the running order? Despite claims to the contrary, it’s popularly assumed that the producers have some idea of how the semi-final qualifiers did in their respective shows. That would certainly seem to be reflected in the relatively late positions of the likes of Cyprus, Israel and Sweden – not to mention Moldova, which probably outperformed in the weaker semi-final and reaps the rewards by being nicely framed here.

Of course, any such assumptions are complicated by the presence of the automatic qualifiers. It’s surprising to see Spain thrown away quite so early in the draw, not least because you’d think they’d want to keep those passionate OT fans hanging on a bit longer, although this way I suppose there’s a better chance they’ll stick around and watch the whole show! Italy is quite a logical closer in terms of its “feel”, while we have to assume the producers think Germany and France are likely to do fairly well, as it’s hard to believe Serbia and Albania did much in the semi-final and that would otherwise be a fairly weak stretch of the show.

What this draw doesn’t do especially is reflect the betting odds – Lithuania were trading as fourth or fifth favourite for a while yesterday, but they find themselves marooned in a fairly thankless fourth spot in the Saturday night running order, while Norway had already drifted from second in the overall betting by the time the order was determined, but it’s notable that the producers haven’t seen fit to put Alexander Rybak right at the end of the first half.

If the producers’ task is also to ensure a good balance of styles, that was made more difficult by the fact that a lot of the slower songs ended up in the first half and a lot of the faster or more unusual entries are in the second half. The run from Lithuania to Estonia could be quite heavy going, while it’s perhaps surprising to see Australia and Finland back to back (albeit separated by a commercial break), though you’re inevitably going to get two up-tempos bumping into each other at some point in that bit of the draw.

Speaking of up-tempo, Latvia’s uphill task in the second semi-final was made even harder by having to follow the pyro overload of Hungary‘s AWS. The final big surprise from the producers, then, is that “Viszlát nyár” will precede Israel‘s “Toy” in the grand final. That promises to be six minutes of very loud, very in-your-face, very un-Eurovision television. It remains to be seen whether the Hungarian pyro damages the next song just like it damaged poor Laura Rizzotto. But they wouldn’t do that to Netta. Or would they…?

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The second semi-final of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest is over, and we have our next ten qualifiers for the grand final on Saturday night! At the post-show press conference, the lucky artists also found out whether they will perform in the first or second half of the final.

The ten qualifiers and their final halves are as follows:

• Serbia: 1st half
• Moldova: 2nd half
• Hungary: 2nd half
• Ukraine: 1st half
• Sweden: 2nd half
• Australia: 2nd half
• Norway: 1st half
• Denmark: 2nd half
• Slovenia: 1st half
• Netherlands: 2nd half

Tonight we also had six qualifiers from the first half of a semi-final – another supposed jinx is broken! Good luck to everyone in the grand final!

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So how did you do on Tuesday? My early-season scepticism over the (then) short odds for Belarus and Macedonia to qualify proved profitable, as did a confident punt on the Irish being able to successfully stage their song for a change – but I did misread the underwhelming early Austrian rehearsals and the market hype over Lithuania, having a little bet against both that obviously proved misguided. A decent evening all in all, though!

And so we turn our attention to tonight’s second semi-final, widely regarded as the considerably weaker of the two and – as such – a bit of a difficult one to predict from a betting perspective. Nevertheless, let’s take a look at the markets and the available odds (at the time of writing!). If you need an introduction to betting odds before we begin, our friends over at Sofabet have a comprehensive guide; I use fractional odds in all my articles on escgo! so that’s what you’ll want to be familiar with.

To lift a phrase directly from Tuesday’s blog, the obvious place to start is the qualification market, since the “yes/no” binary of whether a country comes out of one of those digital envelopes is the only result we’ll actually get to see tonight – the detailed breakdown won’t be revealed until the early hours of Sunday morning. There aren’t too many long shots in this mixed bag of a semi-final, but if you’ve been won over by Lea Sirk’s rehearsal performances for Slovenia, you can still get odds in the region of 5.0 (Ladbrokes, Coral etc.) for her to qualify from her decent position in the running order. Similarly, there might just be an audience for the oasis of calm that is Iriao from Georgia – 5.8 (Marathon Bet) says their ethno-jazz stylings will be making a repeat appearance on Saturday night. At the short-odds end of the market, the obvious qualifiers don’t offer a great deal of value, but you might want to consider the Netherlands. The response to Waylon and his “ode to his own authenticity” (no, seriously, that’s actually what he calls it) has suffered from some decidedly inauthentic staging choices on the part of the Dutch team, but he’s one of the few performers in this semi-final to command every camera and hit every note, and as much as it pains me to say it, I’m sure he’ll be in the pot for the final later tonight. As such, odds of 1.45 (Betfair Exchange) for a return of almost 50% on your money seem too good to refuse.

And then there’s Russia. When have there ever been odds as long as 2.56 (Betfair Exchange) for a Russian entry to qualify? The song, the performer and the whole package this year are subject to so many question marks that I’m going nowhere near it on the betting front – but you may well feel it’s worth a nibble at that price.

Surprise-qualifier band Iriao?

When it comes to non-qualification, Laura Rizzotto from Latvia has fallen slightly out of favour but can still be found at 1.9 (Unibet) to crash out tonight. That seems tempting for a song that’s unlikely to connect with televoters to any great extent, although like the Netherlands, it does represent the kind of psuedo-quality entry that juries have been known to absolutely adore in the past, so it may be better to avoid it in a semi where it mightn’t take much to sneak over the line in tenth place. Elsewhere, Poland is surprisingly highly regarded even allowing for the accessible song and the country’s in-built televoting advantage. Gromee and Lukas Meijer are far from the most convincing of live performers, so the question will be whether the audience in the arena tonight buys into the Avicii-esque tones of “Light Me Up” and helps lift the entry to another level. If they don’t, odds of 3.55 (SportingBet) for a Polish non-qualification start to look interesting.

In terms of the top 3 in the second semi-final, the assembled fan press has gone gaga for Hungary’s screamo band AWS, bringing them in as far as 4.2 (Betfair Exchange) to finish on the podium tonight. I don’t believe they have the mainstream appeal to get anywhere near that, and instead I’d be looking at Ukraine. “Under The Ladder” has gone under the radar as far as punters are concerned, and even if you don’t believe in Melovin’s chances come Saturday night, I’d be happy enough to accept odds of 2.62 (Betfair Exchange) for him to take one of the top three positions from the pimp slot in a seriously patchy semi-final.

As for the winner of tonight’s semi-final, the gamblers of the online world appear happy to endorse Norway, which comes as no surprise given Alexander Rybak’s strong standing in the overall winner market. However, his starting position and the nature of the semi-final audience mean he ought to perform better on Saturday night than he does tonight. If you believe that opens things up for another winner, who stands in line to take his place? Moldova have been one of the outperformers of the week, closing in to just 8.7 (Marathon Bet) to top the table tonight, but I’m not totally sold on the press centre hype for their three-minute Carry On film. I can’t tip Ukraine again, although they could be a decent each-way nibble at 11.0 (various), so how about a really dull choice instead? Sweden. Boring, predictable Sweden with their boringly professional performance and their boringly favourable spot in the running order. You can still grab 4.0 (Coral) for Benjamin Ingrosso to be your semi-final winner tonight, and that doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable.

Engrossing or gross-out?

Let’s finish on a down note, because negativity is fun! Who’s taking last place tonight? It’s a good question, and there’s not much money in the Betfair market for this one at all, though you can expect that to change a little in play. San Marino are the obvious front-runner at odds of 1.55, but we know they’re likely to have a head start of 20+ points from Jessika’s home country of Malta before they even begin. Could anything else fall through the gaps, then? Despite the late draw, it’s conceivable that Montenegro’s umpteenth rehash of that Balkan ballad will get short shrift (it’s currently 4.1 for last place), or you might buy the argument that soberly performed ethno-jazz will not be Europe’s thing at all, in which case Georgia can be taken for 3.15. Serbia could also be a good-value nibble at 8.6, since they’re unlikely to reach beyond the absolute core audience for the almost wilfully difficult “Nova deca”.

The problem faced by tonight’s participating countries that they’ve got to vote for ten songs, even if they don’t actually like ten songs. That could mean the scoring is all over the place, and a country might theoretically finish bottom of the pile with quite a high total score. With that in mind, I’m tempted to say “hands off” when it comes to the last place market, as it could be a bit of a crapshoot – but if you do have an outlier instinct, there’s money to be made.

They are who they are

As always, you can see a full overview of the odds for the various markets and bookmakers at Oddschecker. Wherever you place your money and however you watch the show tonight, I hope you have a fun and profitable evening – and join us in two days’ time as we return to analyse the grand final from a betting perspective, with all the additional markets that brings. Head-to-heads! Regional groups! Everyone vs. the UK! I’ll see you then.

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