Despite saying I'd make just one post about the ESC26 season, there are still some thoughts swirling around in my head that I felt were worth sharing now that the curtain has fallen and the dust is settling.
Back to the Balkans!
Bulgaria's surprise victory will bring the Contest back to the Balkans after two decades, and it couldn't have happened at a more opportune time and to a more fortunate country. After a more than respectable run in the '10s, Bulgaria tapered off in the early '20s before disappearing for three years. Enough has already been said about why and how Bulgaria won, I'd like to debunk or go against a few things that are attempting to diminish its victory:
1. Bulgaria only won because ESC26 slanted more heavily Eastern European
Even if the five countries that withdrew from the Contest because of Israel's participation (Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain) had all given 0/24 to Bulgaria and had miraculously given all of their 24 jury and televote points to the second place, and even if Moldova and Romania had been absent, Bulgaria would still have won.
2. ESC27 is doomed because Bulgaria doesn't have the budget to organise it
Bulgaria is not an affluent nation and isn't used to hosting major international events, but the jokes circulating around the Internet about the Contest falling apart because of that feel pretty mean-spirited. If anything, I'm confident Bulgaria will eagerly seize the PR opportunity to cast itself in the best possible light. In addition, the EBU itself has funds and expertise to help out. Lastly, while ESC26 was mostly good to great from a technical point of view, everything else about it (hosts, interval acts, postcards, script) was dogshit, so it's hard to imagine how it could be worse.
The wisdom of predictions and where things went off the rails
I had 18/20 qualifiers right (the bookies had 19/20) and I didn't make any formal predictions on the actual winner (on the night of the Grand Final I did have 18/25 entries in the right buckets), but my thoughts were mostly in tune with the wider Eurovision sphere, i.e. I was also blindsided by Bulgaria's victory (in a positive sense, I might add). It's actually healthy that Eurovision remains somewhat unpredictable. Many pundits are furiously rethinking their analytical methods and forecasting models (which, again, is also a healthy sign). But there are a few things I've been noticing that might be worth paying some attention to:
1. Betting odds, bookmakers and pundits have their own psychogeographical slants...
Disregarding Israel's dishonest attempts at more or less successfully gaming the televote, betting that countries that usually do well will keep doing so looks safe, but it does get tricky if these countries keep getting almost automatically included in potential winner discussions. I was personally not shocked by Sweden and France performing well below expectations among the bookmakers and the punditry simply by looking at what was in front of me rather than following conventional wisdom.
In general, prediction models do have a slight North-West + historical bias. It's not just about Bulgaria's victory, but also considering Poland's victory in SF1 that no one saw coming. There is often talk of "if this had been country X's entry, it would (not) have qualified", and while such things are impossible to (dis)prove, there is merit in at least keeping that thought at the back of one's mind, because...
2. ... and so does the public
If we detach ourselves from the reality of regional voting blocs and voting patterns, a good example here is Italy. Its ESC26 entry was comparatively weak and campy, with a vocal that was brittle at best in the highest registers. But people liked it anyway because it was legible to them and they can contextualise it, thanks to Italy's massive cultural footprint in popular European consciousness. Not that it always works. Portugal stopped defying the odds in ESC26 after a successful run of putting its musical identity front and centre.
And while countries without a clear psychocultural identity can struggle (e.g. Montenegro, Belgium, San Marino, Czechia), having a clearly defined one can also be a millstone (e.g. the United Kingdom, Spain). Either can be overcome, though. Switzerland rose from the ashes in the late '10s after a long series of nondescript entries, and Greece often pulls through by being in constant, clever dialogue with its own culture and heritage.
3. Let's not forget the ESC televote public is small
Here's a final consideration that is often overlooked: while the Contest is watched by more than 100 million people, only a fraction of those actually cast televotes. Any sort of predictive model is always going to be wobbly if a few hundred votes more or less can cause huge shifts in the results, and that's without mentioning the juries, who seem to have become a lot more whimsical in their point distributions than they once were. So perhaps it's a testament to the strength of the current prediction models and punditry that they get so much right.
