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.”
Eject Israel from the EBU, they’re not better than Russia at this point.
The trouble is, of course, that the primary sponsor of the competition is Moroccanoil: an Israeli firm.
yeah it’s all about that sweet sweet cash. I don’t quite understand how such a minor cosmetics company is able to afford such a big sponsorship for that many years. You’d think L’Oreal or similar international brands have this kind of marketing budget.
i thought that the song Israel competed with is good music, the singer is talented, and in a vacuum it deserves being around the top, but the whole backstory of sending a survivor of the music festival attack that initiated the war just makes it unpalatable.
letting them take part in the competition is also a huge additional stress for security, logistics and broadcast, to avoid physical attacks (several were thwarted during the israeli performances), avoid props like palestinian flag (like when the icelandic band brought one in rotterdam), booing (like in malmö where they had to introduce a delay to be able to remove anything from the final signal)… all that trouble must still be worth it.
They’re much worse.
Politics aside, can someone explain to an American why Israel is in it? Kinda seems weird to have a non-European country in Eurovision.
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!
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.
Relevant video: 8 Ways Eurovision Is Rigged for Israel
Shout-out to people who still think that the Eurovision is not rigged.
Still watch it though.
Once again Italians are precursors, we were rigging Sanremo phone votes WAY before anyone thought of Eurovision
In a time of mass manipulation, propaganda, and war, I am skeptical of phone votes that can be automated via en masse bought SIM cards and a bit of software.
Some people somehow make everything about Israel, it is tiring
Israel is currently starving 2 million people to death and openly advocating for genocide and ethnic cleansing. It is unacceptable to give them a stage and legitimize them that way. If it was Russia still allowed to participate in Eurovision we would have the same outcry.
And in so many cases it is really senseless stupid. It’s fucking Eurovision. It’s a silly, but entertaining show, but some people really take it too serious.
What?
Eurovision has always been political
Only for stupid people who complained about “voting blocks” and “eastern european votes” and stuff like that. Some people take the ESC way to serious.
Clearly you aren’t taking it serious enough
The results of the public votes were FAR too suspect for it to be anything other than vote rigging on Israel’s part, a charm offensive to counteract the literal genocide they’re carrying out.
What do you mean by everything? This is pretty specific. About a specific thing.
If Israel were not present or a potential issue they wouldn’t be mentioned here.
Everything is about Israel. They are destroying our species. Ignore what they are doing at your own peril, friend.
As a Canadian I did get into Eurovision at a point. Some of those acts go fuckin hard. However, I could not care less about this bullshit. Make music, not business, and you get good music.
Just make the voting pricier and donate all the proceeds to the UN.
