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Live EUROVISION 2025 - REHEARSALS AND FINAL DISCUSSION THREAD

Sean
australia

Sean

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Please post all discussion, content and reaction relating to the rehearsals in Basel in this thread!

Our team at escunited.com will be on the ground in Basel bringing #YOU all of the latest content from this year's content, albeit under the latest severe restrictions on fan media imposed by the EBU. Make sure to follow all of our coverage below;

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Semi-Final 1 discussion begins on page 38 of this thread.
Semi-Final 2 discussion begins on page 96 of this thread.
Final discussion begins on page 157 of this thread.
 
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italy

Ajeje Brazorf

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b4ld3r said:
I think it's pretty safe to declare the brief post-pandemic golden era (with Måneskin, Rosa-Linn, Duncan, Daði etc all going viral) as over. The reputation of the contest is in the toilet due to both Israel and unfortunately also to some degree Ukraine.

People complaining about the quality of the songs were clearly correct, otherwise the votes wouldn't have been so split. The quality will continue to trend downwards as long as circumstances are like this.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the UK had to import Scandi songwriters the year after Olly Alexander had such a bad experience, or that Olly (the Italian one lol) turned down ESC after his friend Angelina Mango witnessed the shithshow in Malmö. Gimmick artists are more willing to take part despite controversy, so I think that's the real reason as to why we had so many novelty songs.
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I'm worried about my own country, tbh. One of the reasons for our withdrawal in the late 90's, even if it was a minor issue, was bloc voting. Sanremo winners not going to Eurovision is a worrisome news for Italian fans, we must not underhestimate this issue. Yes, results are good and audience is good, so I don't think RAI will withdraw. But I know for sure Italian audience is volatile and in the future a lack of interest could take us out again, indefinetly.
 
seriouslyscratchy1
uk

seriouslyscratchy1

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My thoughts:

Estonia: I predicted Estonia to not come last in the juries. And so was I correct!
Sweden: Catchy but I agree with juries more.
Austria: JJ did it! Vienna 2026 or Salzburg 2026
Poland: People overestimated its power in the juries - I knew it would flop in the juries, and I was correct
Denmark: I would have expected a few more from the juries but Sissals reaction from the 2 televote points is like POV is doing worse in a test than you expected.
 
aelunic
norway

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My thoughts about the evening. Wasn't able to participate in this thread last night as I was watching with some friends, but had fun reading over a lot of it just now to see how the discussion went.
Just gonna put it into points for simplicity.

  • The hosts were great, especially Hazel, always brought a smile on my face.
  • I'm proud of my country despite the not so great result, Kyle had a really great performance.
  • Nemo's pause number / new song was... not it. As much as I love them, I did not love that performance.
  • The Käärijä and Baby Lasagna part was AMAZING.
  • Austria was my 3. and I'm very happy with them winning, the song is absolutely breathtaking.
  • The fact that Martin doesn't even show up anymore because he knows people will be booing... the EBU is fully aware of the bad choices they make, but don't attempt to fix them, they just censor the people instead, adding artificial applause to hide booing at certain parts of the show and such. Yikes.
  • The voting was absolute CHAOS. And juries need to change, too much neighbor voting.
  • I am fully convinced a bunch of zionists that don't give a f about Eurovision are spam-voting for Israel completely irrelevant of the song.
  • The fact that Israel is there despite everything makes it really hard to enjoy ESC, which hurts as it is my favorite time of the year. Their presence is completely draining my happiness. Please get them out already. I told my friends "If Israel wins I might drop ESC overall."
  • Upon announcing the last points for Austria, everyone in my living room screamed, we probably woke up the whole neighborhood.
Even though it ended well, this can't keep going on, it needs to change. ESC is not the happy place it used to be, especially the past two years it has felt like a dark cloud has been hanging over us instead of the usual sun and rainbow.
 
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jatojo
denmark

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If I were a host nation, I would go for a ballad. With the participation in the Grand Final guaranteed, I would look to the juries and expect loads of votes. All ballads did well in the final yesterday. In fact this was a massive ballad year. And the ballads were indeed good, but I still find the juries too one-sided here. Or to put it another way, given than the juries are so one-sided, I think their influence should be reduced.
 
GermanBango
germany

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Why do I feel like this gif will sum up Eurovision results for a foreseeable future ... :unsure:

ru-paul-not-today-stan.gif
 
aef
austria

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Matt was actually quite good at predicting the countries televoting scores (for some he was really off though).

And his overall reaction to the insane voting is the same as every fan probably felt last night.

Also the reaction to the :ch: 0 points… it was also the biggest shocker for me and my friends…
 
sweden

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b4ld3r said:
I think it's pretty safe to declare the brief post-pandemic golden era (with Måneskin, Rosa-Linn, Duncan, Daði etc all going viral) as over. The reputation of the contest is in the toilet due to both Israel and unfortunately also to some degree Ukraine.

People complaining about the quality of the songs were clearly correct, otherwise the votes wouldn't have been so split. The quality will continue to trend downwards as long as circumstances are like this.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the UK had to import Scandi songwriters the year after Olly Alexander had such a bad experience, or that Olly (the Italian one lol) turned down ESC after his friend Angelina Mango witnessed the shithshow in Malmö. Gimmick artists are more willing to take part despite controversy, so I think that's the real reason as to why we had so many novelty songs.
Click to expand...
I think both Måneskin and Duncan had overrated songs although they went viral.
 
italy

Ajeje Brazorf

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freerider said:
I think both Måneskin and Duncan had overrated songs although they went viral.
Click to expand...

Måneskin won Eurovision when some certain blog actually posted "I wanna be your slave" on their YouTube channel prior to the final. There I knew they would have won. That video made 1 million views in few hours.
 

Lona

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Gitte said:
random thoughts/desires:
  1. Juries need to be bigger and either demoscopic (in which case, no televote, tho unrealistic) or true professionals, but primarily, more people.
  2. there needs to be a way to prove you are watching/have watched what you vote for.
  3. No voting marketing. Just. No voting marketing. Ads for televoting are forbidden.
  4. Any country whose weapons have recently killed at least x thousand people in " their own " or a neighbouring country/territory in the past year has to be excluded.
  5. The show needs to be less big/look at my pretty stage. There are artists whose face we barely saw because there were constant zoom outs to the big stage showing of the lights. Less emphasis on "how many fancy led screens and strobe lights can we have" and more on songs. The staging being smaller/less expensive will also advantage countries who don't have giant budgets.
  6. Totally randomized running order. Yes, it might not give the best flow, but give it all to pure luck, no producer meddling.
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I know you target Israel with point 4, but it would also include Ukraine and Poland, because of the war in Ukraine. And depending on how broadly you define "neighbouring", it might include even more countries as tons of EBU countries sent weapons to Ukraine.

So then you would have to add something about if it is a justified conflict or outright war or not. And then you get totally into politics which can be really divided.
 
Gitte
belgium

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Lona said:
I know you target Israel with point 4, but it would also include Ukraine and Poland, because of the war in Ukraine. And depending on how broadly you define "neighbouring", it might include even more countries as tons of EBU countries sent weapons to Ukraine.

So then you would have to add something about if it is a justified conflict or outright war or not. And then you get totally into politics which can be really divided.
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let me clarify on weapons; the country launching/ whose soldiers are using them. And yes, even tho I love ukraine in eurovision pre-2022 and I also loved last year, the voting is a bit weird there as well and it would include them.

I also have azerbaijan in mind, but am not knowledgeable enough about the kinda swept under the rug and not at all talked about azerbaijan - armenia conflict to know whether they should both be included in the byebye. Afaik Azerbaijan is more so the aggressor, but it's not like they are getting freebie televotes anyway.

I tried to word it vaguely on purpose, because it is complicated, but I think it is clear that israel's votes are off and it is influenced by the political situation. Maybe #3 and #2 can solve it in part.

Maybe also a limit on televotes. No 20 votes/person, maybe 5 or max 5 for one country, and ID rather than creditcard/phonecard based. People can have multiple creditcards or simcards and send like 100 points to one country that way, which has been proven some israel supporters did, but multiple id's is harder.
 
Decayingbooks
portugal

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Lona said:
I know you target Israel with point 4, but it would also include Ukraine and Poland, because of the war in Ukraine. And depending on how broadly you define "neighbouring", it might include even more countries as tons of EBU countries sent weapons to Ukraine.

So then you would have to add something about if it is a justified conflict or outright war or not. And then you get totally into politics which can be really divided.
Click to expand...
Not to mention Armenia and Azerbaijan that are on an ongoing conflict since 1988
 
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