Eurovision betting is a distinctive type of non-sports betting. There are some aspects that make this market so different that it is not a surprise that punters get to develop so much interest in placing bets on how countries will perform in a song contest that is held on an annual basis among (but not limited to) nations of the European continent.
The thing with Eurovision betting is that although it should be largely unpredictable and fluid, it is more readable than one can imagine, and this is largely due to the contribution of all bookmakers offering online betting in Portugal and in other parts of the world. A first glance at the Eurovision Song Contest gives you the impression that it is very difficult to predict certain outcomes when there are so many countries involved, so many different sources of voting and so many different contestants.
But a closer look at how the Eurovision Song Contest unfolds over the past two decades or so only gives us a clue that the competition is not as volatile as we believed it to be. Of course, there is no certain result and no certain, predetermined outcome, just as in any other sports betting market like football. But there is a great deal of predictability in the various events making up the big Contest.
To illustrate this, let’s see the win rates of the favorites in the Eurovision Song Contest. In the last fifteen years, bookmakers’ favorites for the top positions of the competition have made it in almost 76% of the cases. More precisely, at least three of the five participations forecasted by bookmakers to be in the top 5 of the Final have indeed finished in the top 5. The predictive power of odds, therefore, is largely supported here.
Now, when it comes to the Semi-Finals, the predictive ability of the odds is even higher. Data has shown that bookmakers’ forecasts on which countries are going to qualify for the Eurovision Final rarely miss – at least for their biggest part.
This means that looking at the odds and how the betting market is shaped, adjusted and configured by the sportsbooks themselves is really useful in helping you make more effective predictions on the different outcomes or results of the Eurovision Song Contest.
But if Eurovision is Such a Predictable Market, Then What is the Interest Betting-Wise?
Well, that’s the exciting thing. While odds work and the win rate of favorites is really high, there are often great upsets that turn the situation around and give you a chance to win big when you place bets and also there are many more markets than the outright market!
Things don’t always go as expected. In many cases, great underdogs have seen their songs shot straight to the top positions of the contest. No one expected that Austria’s “Nobody But You” would finish third back in 2018, when bookmakers predicted the country to be somewhere between the 16th and 18th position! And it was a big surprise that Serbia got the fifth place in 2022, when betting sites put it close to the last contestants. Or that Cyprus’ “Fuego” would finish 2nd in 2018, when bookmakers did not even see the song moving past the Semifinals and qualifying for the Eurovision Final.
There are so many underdog tales in the Eurovision Song Contest that it would require pages and pages to be written about Cinderella stories. What you should get from all these is that the competition is quite predictable when it comes to outright betting – it is a safer market but not a lucrative one.
But all things are happening in other betting markets and this is where you should focus more. Betting on who will get past the Semifinals, betting on whether a country will be in the top five of the competition, betting on which countries will finish last in the Final, on which countries will not qualify for the next round or even on which country will occupy a certain let’s say position in the end, are all wagers which can be very attractive for punters!