Who Will Win Eurovision?

The Eurovision is upon us and I know I’m not the only one to be terribly excited at music extravaganza that will delight millions of eyes and ears on 26^th May 2012. Yes, the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 has snuck up on us like it does every year!

I appreciate that Eurovision is an acquired taste but I for one love the spectacle of it all. Katrina and the Waves winning seemed like a big deal when I was still at school! And with the United Kingdom in the throes of national pride and patriotism (London is hosting Olympics and it is the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee if you hadn’t noticed!), why would we not want to add hosting the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 as way to steamroll our national pride into 2013!

Eurovision Song Contest – an introduction

For anyone unaware of the process, 26 countries participate in winning the Eurovision Song Contest. Each participating country will perform one song and then the rest of Europe (some 40-50 countries) vote for their favourite song. The points are given to the 10 highest voted countries in descending order of 12, 10 and then 8 – 1. The winner of Eurovision is most often the country that wins the most illustrious 12 points (or douze points if you will).

Eurovision has long been criticised for political voting, the denigration got so bad that the Eurovision Song Committee reinstated an impartial voting jury to make up 50% of the voting score. Currently, Sweden’s Loreen and Euphoria is the bookie’s favourite to win the contest. However, I wanted to see if you could predict the winner based on social media!

Predicting the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 winner!

For this piece of analysis, I looked at four social media metrics:

• The number of Facebook likes
• The number of Twitter followers
• The number of YouTube views for the official video
• The number of YouTube likes for the official video

Please note, where possible I used the official Facebook fan page. Three countries did not have an official page: Greece, Spain and Macedonia (their acts Facebook page was instead their Wikipedia data). I also tried to use, where possible, the official Twitter accounts for the entrants. Two acts did not have a Twitter account – the lovely ladies of Russia, Buranovskiye Babushki and Macedonia’s Kaliopi.

For the YouTube data, I tried to use the official (or near office) video posted on the Eurovision YouTube channel. These are all dated from approximately two months ago.

Outlying variables include the artist already being famous nationally or internationally. This can have a big impact on the night. Similarly, the biggest variable will most likely be the song itself. A good song will often win over any political voting bias (Lena’s Satellite or Alexander Rybak’s Fairytale being two recent winners that spring to mind). Similarly, the song order may also prove to be a vital factor. Nonetheless, I think the results prove to be very interesting!

Eurovision artists on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

Below you can see the raw data that I collected for this analysis. The top 10 countries/acts in each vertical were then awarded points based on the same Eurovision point scoring system (i.e. the act with the most Facebook likes would then receive 12 points).

I have listed the acts in the order they are drawn to perform.

Country	Artist	Song	Facebook Likes	Twitter Followers	YouTube Views	YouTube Likes
United Kingdom	Engelbert Humperdinck	Love Will Set You Free	36,150	2,063	1,226,989	7,935
Hungary	Compact Disco	Sound of Our Hearts	6,367	1,324	380,414	4,230
Albania	Rona Nishliu	Suus3	16,841	1,651	741,932	6,111
Lithuania	Donny Montell	Love is Blind	478	440	283,163	2,732
Bosnia and Herzegovina	MayaSar	Korake ti znam	4,607	215	551,231	2,815
Russia	Buranovskiye Babushki	Party for Everybody	2,940	0	3,365,289	18,365
Iceland	Gréta Salóme & Jónsi	Never Forget	1,195	369	595,991	5,640
Cyprus	Ivi Adamou	La La Love	99,910	14,084	225,740	13,935
France	Anggun	Echo (You and I)	225,821	261,534	368,986	2,511
Italy	Nina Zilli	L’amore è femmina (Out of Love)	152,134	49,573	620,964	5,094
Estonia	Ott Lepland	Kuula	7,913	311	440,519	3,539
Norway	Tooji	Stay	9,203	4,385	455,983	3,005
Azerbaijan (host)	Sabina Babayeva	When the Music Dies	37,560	550	925,013	6,149
Romania	Mandinga	Zaleilah	51,580	1,256	884,147	6,730
Denmark	Soluna Samay	Should’ve Known Better	32,750	3,841	341,190	2,217
Greece	Eleftheria Eleftheriou	Aphrodisiac	531	15,127	960,799	5,052
Sweden	Loreen	Euphoria	71,557	9,804	3,761,993	17,561
Turkey	Can Bonomo	Love Me Back	387,834	392,325	1,176,276	6,993
Spain	Pastora Soler	Quédate conmigo	6,965	79,394	676,275	5,560
Germany	Roman Lob	Standing Still	56,799	1,846	919,390	7,325
Malta	Kurt Calleja	This Is the Night	3,029	1,249	405,659	3,384
Macedonia	Kaliopi	Crno i belo	5,161	0	474,677	3,981
Ireland	Jedward	Waterline	165,038	606,164	593,061	3,877
Serbia	Željko Joksimovic	Nije ljubav stvar	295,803	24,722	822,166	5,195
Ukraine	Gaitana	Be My Guest	440	187	384,701	2,382
Moldova	Pasha Parfeny	Lautar	767	141	298,305	2,632

As you can see, there are some significant differences in the social media presence of the different participants.

For Facebook likes, Turkey, Serbia, France, Ireland and Italy receive the most points. On Twitter, Ireland, Turkey, France and Italy also make the top spots and are joined by Spain. Then things start to get a little interesting.

As mentioned before, the biggest variable, the song, is arguable the most important. And whilst Facebook and Twitter may be a better measure of how famous the act is, it is not a reflection of the song itself. The YouTube data may be the best at identifying how well a song is liked.

Sweden’s Loreen and Euphoria tops the chart for YouTube views with almost 4 million – significantly higher than second place (Russia) and far higher than third place (the UK). It is also worth noting that Sweden and Russia also have the highest amount of likes but Cyprus makes a surprise entry at three.

Predicted Eurovision Song Contest Winner

And so… based on the social media metrics discussed, who do I predict will win the Eurovision Song Contest 2012?  Firstly, the scores:

Country	Facebook Pts	Twitter Pts	YouTube Views Pts	YouTube Likes Pts
United Kingdom			8	7
Hungary
Albania			1	2
Lithuania
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Russia			10	12
Iceland				1
Cyprus	5	3		8
France	8	8
Italy	6	6
Estonia
Norway		1
Azerbaijan (host)	1		5	3
Romania	2		3	4
Denmark
Greece		4	6
Sweden	4	2	12	10
Turkey	12	10	7	5
Spain		7
Germany	3		4	6
Malta
Macedonia
Ireland	7	12
Serbia	10	5	2
Ukraine
Moldova

The Eurovision Song Contest 2012 winner is…

And then the final results and the winner is…

Order	Country	Total
1	Turkey	34
2	Sweden	28
3	Russia	22
4	Ireland	19
5	Serbia	17
6	Cyprus	16
7	France	16
8	United Kingdom	15
9	Germany	13
10	Italy	12
11	Greece	10
12	Azerbaijan (host)	9
13	Romania	9
14	Spain	7
15	Albania	3
16	Iceland	1
17	Norway	1
18	Hungary	0
19	Lithuania	0
20	Bosnia and Herzegovina	0
21	Estonia	0
22	Denmark	0
23	Malta	0
24	Macedonia	0
25	Ukraine	0
26	Moldova	0

Surprisingly Turkey comes up trumps! With a large number of Facebook likes and Twitter followers, and respectable YouTube scores, Turkey’s Can Bonomo with Love Me Back has come out highest.  In contrast, Sweden’s Loreen has come second. Euphoria scored extremely highly on YouTube but not as well on Facebook or Twitter.

If I was betting man, I would put money on both Turkey and Sweden!

Further analysis shows that it is looking like it could be a good year for the Big Five with France, United Kingdom, Germany and Italy all reaching the top 10.

Of course, this isn’t a scientific study by any stretch of the imagination and don’t come knocking if Turkey or Sweden don’t win, but hopefully this will give you a useful insight!

(my personal vote for a winner is Sweden!). Happy watching!  Return on Monday to find out