Our 12 Points Go To…
In the words of Eurovision legend Jon Ola Sand, ‘take it away!’
The Eurovision Song Contest held its 65th edition in Italy last night with Ukraine voted as the eventual winners
Even though the contest has taken place 65 times, it has had 68 winners. There were four winners in the 1969 competition after the UK, Spain, Netherlands and France finished with the same number of points. Since then, new rules dictating what happens in the case of a tie have been introduced
Ireland has the most victories in the competition (7 wins) with Johnny Logan involved in 3 of these (winning in 1980 and 1987, and writing the winning song in 1992)
They are followed by Sweden (6 wins), Luxembourg, France, Netherlands and the UK (all on 5)
Ireland has the most victories in the competition (7 wins) with Johnny Logan involved in 3 of these
Even though the UK are well known for coming near the bottom of the table in recent years, they aren’t the country with the most last place finishes. That title goes to Norway who has come last on 12 occasions
In total, over 1,500 songs have been performed in the competition, equivalent to listening to 72 hours consecutively
The jury-based voting system has been in place since the first competition with televoting only introduced in 1997, although there are claims that the voting has become increasingly political in recent years. You can decide for yourself be checking out this dashboard showing voting patterns by country
Want to know more about the history of Eurovision?
- The show originally started in 1956, with just 7 countries participating (performing two songs each)
- The break-up of the Soviet Union resulted in more countries wanting to join, resulting in 25 countries taking part in 1993
- One semi-final was introduced in 2004 and then a second semi-final in 2008, resulting in a record 43 countries taking part that year
- Then in 2015, Eurovision was awarded a Guinness World Record as the longest running annual TV music competition
- In total, there have been 52 different countries that have competed since its first edition, with Australia being the most recent country to make its debut in 2015
- Tunisia and Lebanon both applied to take part (in 1977 and 2005) but both withdrew their applications before the contest
- And Kosovo, Liechtenstein and Kazakhstan have more recently declared an interest in competing, although as they are not full members of the EBU, this is unlikely to happen soon
Source: Eurovision Facts; Eurovision GWR; Esctoday; Tableau; Eurovision World
