Eurovision 2018: Semi-Final 1 Review

What a night for Eurovision, one of the toughest semi-finals ever and some interesting results. In this article we'll try to dissect what happened and where we go from here, who do we think won the semi and did we see the grand final winner perform last night?

We were a little preoccupied at the start of the semi frantically fixing the Instagram stats which had died sometime over the past week so I couldn't get a few of the less-than-30-minute stats on the site immediately - we still have the raw data though so will populate the Instagram table soon with all the results. Overall though, we were pleased with how things went. On the 30 minute scale TellyStats got 9/10 qualifiers on the Facebook and Twitter stats, 8/10 on the Instagram stats and 6/10 on the YouTube stats.

How Did We Do?

These aren't necessarily the best stats to use, for example I personally prefer YouTube Likes over Views as it takes a tiny bit more interaction and commitment from someone to hit the 'Like' button on a YouTube video than it does to simply watch it. Anyway, TellyStats always has to emphasise, stats are a guideline, they're an accessory, not gospel - you get a general idea of our successes and failures from the table above.

What We Got Right and Wrong

No surprises for the top 5, Cyprus, Israel, Czech Republic, Estonia and Bulgaria - most people were confident they'd progress, top 10 on all 4 platforms it wasn't difficult to bag yourself an easy 5% - 15% return on your cash. The bigger issue lay in identifying value in the rest of the entrants, too many potential qualifiers vying for too few qualification spots.

Lithuania were top 10 in all platforms which gives a high (but not absolute) degree of certainty - either way it had us piling onto it's "To Qualify" odds. We'd found the music video boring and like most Eurovision pundits didn't even have it classed as borderline, but last night's semi was proof of how important context is when reading stats. The staging, what a masterclass - no frills, lots of close-ups and very intimate. Couple that with excellent stats results and it was our biggest win of the night, who'd have thought?

Similarly with Finland, there had been positive reports flying around about the jury performance, when Finland hit top 10 on three of the stats platforms, it was time to stick some cash on it. Finland didn't fall below 1.75 on Betfair to qualify, closing at around 1.9. Same with Albania, it was at 4.5 to qualify when the market closed - in the top 10 on two platforms on the higher end of the tables. We threw some speculative cash at it at around 4.6 and were pleasantly surprised.

The big shock of the night though was Ireland, our review was generally positive, noting that on a personal level we hoped it would progress (but it was doubtful). Again staging came through for them, we thought they'd play it safe and have a male-female couple dancing on stage, but kudos to them for going with male-male, forcing non-progressive Europe to suck it up. Along with Cyprus, the gays came out in force for Ireland.

We can't just extol our good results, Greece was top 10 on all platforms and crashed out. We'd backed them to qualify but bailed for a small loss pre-show after reading too many negative reports of the jury performance on our News page. There was no choice but to be skeptical about Greece after that. Greece gave a not-great performance but went on to get high stats figures anyway - this is a classic sign that stats are being misrepresented, now we know for sure that Greece has an active diaspora online that will go crazy on social media for even a poor performance. On the flipside, Lithuania and Albania exceeded it's low pre-show expectations and got high stats figures to back it up, this is when you should be backing them as it's the epitome of value.

What Next?

Let's start with the top of the market, only 1 of the 5 'big' acts met expectations and that was Cyprus, all others fell short and their odds drifted as a result. We see this all the time in reality TV such as Strictly Come Dancing with your Danny Mac's and your Natalie Gumede's - if you're incredible, you have to be incredible every time, the only other direction is down - and that's what happened to Israel, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Estonia. We did say you had to have your head examined backing Israel at 3.00, the market now has them at 7.6. This isn't to say they're out of the running but the performance needs work, the fake-looper we highlighted was also an issue.

Cyprus was the big story of the night though, topping 3 of our stats platform tables it almost certainly won the semi (unless that Greek diaspora gave them a boost too - which is possible). We got a bit of triumphant abuse from Cypriots on Twitter as Cyprus approached favourite in the market for our review of 'Fuego' but we stand by it - of the staging, dancing and the song itself, the song is the worst of the three. The pyro effects and the Beyonce-dancing are the real selling point of this track, reading through Facebook comments suggests this is the general consensus too. Do we think it'll win? The honest answer is we don't know, it likely won the semi so it stands a decent shot but the best move would be to wait to see the stats during the grand final before placing a significant position - that's what we'll be doing anyway. In our opinion, it'd be a sad sight to see Salvador Sobral, who famously used his victory speech last year to implore Europe to ditch plastic pop - handing over the trophy to Cyprus.

The grand final results for the rest of the entrants are fairly clear cut, Ireland, Albania and Austria well into the right-hand side of the results table with Finland still on the right-hand side but probably somewhere between 14th - 17th. The first-half of the grand final is going to be a slow-song snoozefest but Lithuania is one of the few slow songs that does actually succeed in hitting you in the feels, so possible a top 15 result for them. From this semi, only Israel and Cyprus have a chance at winning, the rest will be spread around the top 10.

Before we talk about the next semi, let's touch on the Big 5, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom performed last night. Portugal and the UK's chances can be ignored. We can reveal though that Spain's YouTube video of the performance got 46,278 views and 4,975 Likes in 1 hour. This is more than Israel but less than Cyprus on both measures. However Spain's performance wasn't aired on TV which makes the comparison more difficult. It fits with Spain's good YouTube stats for it's second rehearsal and it's official video though. Either they're a contender, or the Spanish diaspora is coming out to boost their numbers too. Time will tell.

In terms of the next semi, Rybak for Norway is an excellent performer and, unlike some other frontrunners, will live up to that expectation on the night (and likely take the win). We're also pretty confident Moldova, Ukraine, Poland, Sweden and Australia will progress. Sweden at 1.04 is a lay for us to back again at a higher price on the night (maybe around 1.15). We had a speculative bet on Slovenia to qualify at decent odds but don't hold out much hope. Beyond that we're hoping that the sheer number of supposed no-hopers in this semi means the stats reveal some juicy value. Make sure you're here at TellyStats.com on Thursday night.

Eurovision 2018: Second Rehearsal Stats Analysis

People often try to analyse social media stats to gain an advantage in betting markets, or just to see how their favourite contestants are doing. However, the stats can often be misleading if this is done manually. Take YouTube for example, a video uploaded 25 hours ago and a video uploaded 47 hours ago will both have Uploaded: 1 day ago under the listing, despite one video having been up for almost double the time.

TellyStats takes a different approach by collecting social media stats at exact times using automated scripts. This ensures that if we want the metrics of a video 24 hours after it was uploaded, we get those metrics right down to the second, this eliminating confusion and bias.

We analysed each country's Second Rehearsal YouTube video and took stats exactly 24 hours after the upload time and found some interesting results that are worth sharing - particularly if you're betting on these markets. These are untested stats, the first time we've taken them so it's up to you to decide if you want to take action based on the results.

We took the Views, Likes and a Combined total (which is Views * Likes, the result is then divided by 100,000 for legibility). We also included Dislikes just for fun, they're not so relevant as Eurovision is a positive vote event, effectively you're voting to save a contestant, not eliminate but worth adding just to see. Click on the column headers to snap the data into descending order.

Semi Final 1

Semi Final 1 Analysis:

• The most obvious result is that Cyprus has beaten Israel on all metrics. The Views are actually very close but it only serves to highlight that Israel only got 82% the Likes of Cyprus. Take a look at Israel's Dislikes too.
• Belgium's surprisingly poor results, both Views and Likes are outside the Top 10 and to top it off, it got the highest number of Dislikes. In fact, it has the second highest ratio of Likes:Dislikes of all stats in this article (behind Russia). This strongly suggests that Belgium are in serious trouble for qualification and the value may lie in Azerbaijan, FYR Macedonia and Lithuania - particularly as FYR Macedonia is currently 8/1 to qualify.
• Viewers aren't impressed with what they've seen from Bulgaria's rehearsal footage and it suggests that the critique of the staging being too dark and disconnecting may have some merit.
• We tipped Greece as a contender in our review and the strong showing seems to suggest there may be something behind it, it's even smashed the Czech Republic's stats despite how much of a favourite it is.
• Switzerland's "To Qualify" odds plummeted recently from 4/1 now at evens, these stats suggest that it's as unpopular as ever. Similarly Armenia and Austria backers have cause for concern.

Semi Final 2

Semi Final 2 Analysis

• The most obvious thing here is how utterly terrible the stats are compared to the first semi. It almost looks like a mistake, but no, all the stats were taken in the same way after an exact 24 hours had passed. So what happened?
• The frontrunners are supposed to be Norway, Sweden, Australia and The Netherlands. All 4 countries' rehearsals disappointed viewers, as evidenced by the high Dislike count on all of them and the video comments. Norway actually got more Dislikes than Likes. Reading the comments on Norway's video suggests that outside the Eurovision bubble, this shouldn't be anywhere near 2nd favourite to win.
• More evidence that the stats aren't wrong is that the second and third tier competitors weren't affected, they all got the stats counts you'd expect - this has allowed Moldova and Ukraine to present themselves as potential contenders to win this semi. Ukraine has the last slot in the running order with an energetic routine and the highest stats and Moldova has a great staging concept.
• Russia received the highest proportion of Dislikes than any act this year, it's high View count could either be because of the high Russian diaspora - or it could be people looking for 'car-crash' viewing. This is an example where context matters, I think this is car crash viewing.
• Could Slovenia actually qualify? Their "To Qualify" odds are currently 11/2, the YouTube video comments are universally positive - and Slovenia sing second-to-last. Surely worth a gamble.

Big 5 + Portugal

Big 5 + Portugal Analysis:

• I questioned in our review if punters had taken their eye off the ball with Spain in favour of other acts that released their songs later on and these stats suggest this may be the case. They've smashed the Likes count (which are arguably the more important metric) of all other countries in the competition, the nearest competitor, Cyprus only got 35% the number of Likes despite having 72% more Views. Spain also require the fewest number of Views for each 1 Like out of all competitors, just 9 Views per Like, it's nearest competitor required 20. Don't forget, the official video for Spain's song also got the second-highest number of Views and Likes after 7 days of all competitors too. Spain currently trades at 94/1 and whether or not you feel that social media stats are worth much, this has to give food for thought, perhaps as a potential back-to-lay at least. Some negatives to this are that the staging is pretty horrendous and they've just drawn a first-half running order for the final.

If you think these numbers are flawed, let's look at another set of data. We took the current market leaders and stuck them into Google Trends - we also included Spain because of the interesting numbers it generated in the YouTube tables. As you can see, searches for Spain have been consistently popular throughout the contest so far, second only to Israel. Cyprus' burst of popularity is a recent phenomenon. There has been a lot of hype for various countries this year, seemingly at random - all of this data may be stripping away hype and showing us where the popularity really lies. Feel free to visit our Google Trends page to play with this a bit more.

Before you go rushing off to gamble your mortgage, a word of caution. Stats here, and anywhere on this site should be read as a general guideline, context is always the most important, unquantifiable metric. This is the first year we've taken Rehearsal metrics so we've no idea yet how/if they correlate to reality. There is generally an incredibly strong and undeniable correlation between social media stats and reality TV results, but you should add a margin-of-error you feel comfortable with. TellyStats monitors various metrics to give as holistic a view as possible - with new metrics coming soon that provide ever more accurate results. As with last year, we'll be monitoring the Semis and the Grand Final of Eurovision live on the night, in such a difficult year to call, you can't afford not to be here.

Review: Mikolas Josef - Lie To Me - Czech Republic

TellyStats Rating:

7 Day YouTube Views: 521,028
7 Day YouTube Likes: 13,249

The Czech Republic bring us Lie To Me performed by Mikolas Josef, a tongue-in-cheek and modern pop song with a great trumpet hook - comparable to 2017's Moldova's saxophone hook which worked well for them.

The song is split in 3 parts which repeat throughout the song, Mikolas rapping the verses, the 'Lie To Me' refrain and the trumpet hook. All of them work well in their own way and the trumpet makes the song instantly accessible and recognisable - even for viewers that don't speak English, it's a satisfying part of the song to bop along and listen to. The rapped segments are a little hard to follow because it flows rather quickly and is full of yoof lingo but the subject matter of the song is that Mikolas is telling his girl he knows she sleeps with other guys but it turns him on to have her lie to him about it. A cuckold's anthem really.

Lie To Me was originally was much more explicit but has been toned down for Eurovision, in fact not just the lyrics but even the staging has been toned down after a few somersaults too many sent Mikolas to hospital. This does lower the energy ever so slightly because Mikolas is forced to be a little more stationary than her was during his previous performances - he now delegates somersaults to his dance crew. Saying this, it's still high-energy and should be a good watch. Mikolas is a handsome young man and has the standard teenage girl fanbase which he mostly shares with Alekseev of Belarus.

In terms of negatives, the style of song doesn't fit the mould of a usual winner and hype for the song has died down in the last week or so. The rap sections work great for us English-speakers but to the rest of Europe it might be fairly meaningless, especially as there's no backing tune during those segments. The official music video is slickly produced and has a high number of hits - the transition from rapped music video with editing and music balancing may not translate quite so well live.

Saying that though, we expect the Czech Republic to do well - but not win. It was 2nd favourite in the betting markets for a long time but has yielded ground to Norway and Cyprus since. It's YouTube stats are in the higher ranges but beaten by enough other songs to suggest it doesn't pose a threat to take the contest this year. Mikolas performs in the first half of the competitive first semi final but shouldn't have any problems, despite being on early and just before Israel in the running order. We predict a 3rd - 6th place for the Czech Republic in the final.

Review: Netta - TOY - Israel

TellyStats Rating:

7 Day YouTube Views: 4,997,180
7 Day YouTube Likes: 137,151

Ree! Ouch! Heh! Hmm! Lah! Within the first 3 seconds, Israel's song Toy has already grabbed your attention - it stands an excellent chance of winning too.

The lyrics, pace and dance routine are unique, inventive and multi-layered - each segment fits and eventually builds to an energetic finale, there's clearly been a considerable sum thrown at this song to bring it together. Netta herself is a force to be reckoned with, an experienced performer and hugely popular in Israel. Much of the song has Netta clucking and dancing like a chicken which has been a point of debate within the Eurovision community - does it add to the song or just look a bit naff? Will viewers get it? I personally think it simply adds another level of uniqueness to an already strong entry.

Toy plays to a few key demographics, beyond the 'noises' Netta makes, the very first lyrics are "Look at me, I'm a beautiful creature", followed later by "Wonder woman don't you ever forget, you're divine and he's about to regret". Repeating to oneself that you're beautiful and perfect - even if the medical and physical evidence suggests otherwise is very much in vogue right now. The song is on board with the female empowerment angle and is also pretty camp with an air of 'I am who I am' which may play well with Eurovision's sizeable gay viewership too (though that rug seems to have been swept out from under Netta's feet by Cyprus).

In terms of negatives, Netta could come across a little aggressive, however this remark has generally come from Eurovision pundits largely made up of men, other demographics may disagree. Netta originally started her song using a looper which Eurovision have now said she can't use, it's been replaced by backing vocalists instead which for me ruin the effect - especially as she now pretends to play a looper even when it's clearly not being used.

Toy has been at the head of the betting markets since it's reveal, currently under 3/1. In a field of 43 with plenty of unknowns, anybody backing Israel at that price needs their head examined - even if they genuinely think it's the best song, it's simply too low and we've seen many short-priced favourites turned over in the final when it didn't come together as well as it should (see Italy 2017). Saying that though, Toy's YouTube stats are ridiculously high, 5 million views and over 100,000 likes in 7 days blows everyone else out of the water. If you'd wanted to back Israel though, the time to do it has passed and you might as well just wait for the grand final and hope that you can get in bigger, if it all. Israel sings in the first half of the second semi-final, it's guaranteed to qualify but the hype right now is on Cyprus - could there be an upset if it wins instead of Israel?

For me, this is a Top 3 finisher but like many of the songs at the top of the market, there are niggling doubts as to whether or not it can win. Much of this year's Eurovision will come down to how the song comes across on-screen particularly in contrast to the slick music videos. Where the markets are now, I'd sooner back other contestants at bigger prices than Israel and hope they come in during the finals.

Review: Elina Nechayeva - La Forza - Estonia

TellyStats Rating:

7 Day YouTube Views: 579,303
7 Day YouTube Likes: 10,002

Estonia's 2018 Eurovision entry is Elina Nechayeva with La Forza, our only operatic song in this year's competition.

Well, it's more like mass-market opera, most recognise the quality of opera and the immense skill it takes to sing it, but it's a rather inaccessible genre to the layman, Estonia have taken the best bits of opera and added a pop element, particularly when the beat kicks in. Some people think this 'popera' element will damage Estonia's chances, I see it as an improvement.

The melody of La Forza progresses in a predictable way, the chorus is easy to latch onto and some of the high notes are incredible, 10 out of 10 for Elina's singing ability. The question is: Can it win Eurovision? I believe it stands a very good chance indeed

Opera has had mixed results in recent years but there have been some results which mean this can't be ruled out. Il Volo tend to be referred to the most as an operatic song that prove Estonia's entry can't win. I disagree, Il Volo was 3 men singing what I regard as a rather mediocre song and still won the televote, this is a solo woman singing an entirely different song in a different style, yes they're both opera but aside from that they're hardly comparable. I regard 2018 as a rather weak year with plenty of very beatable songs, Estonia's entry is one to watch for the win.

The main criticism some will level at the song is that it leaves them cold, but I think that will be offset by the number of people who recognise the skill of the singer, the USP and memorability of the song and those that are moved by the tone of the melody.

Furthermore, after some doubts whether or not they could afford it, Estonia have managed to scrape the money together for an eye-catching staging setup. Opera like this generally demands a stationary singer so they're using a projected light effect on Elina's oversized dress spread around her. I think it really adds to the performance and makes it more impactful.

Estonia probably spent the most time as 2nd favourite in the betting markets, occasionally switching with Bulgaria and the Czech Republic but currently superceded by France and incredibly, Norway. La Forza for me is a Top 5 finisher. Despite singing in the strong first semi-final, Eleni's progression from the semi-finals is all but guaranteed and the market knows it. At 11/1 in the market, I'd sooner put my money on this than Israel at 2/1.