Liverpool certainly lived up to its reputation as a city with a strong music and entertainment heritage as it put on an excellent show hosting this year’s Eurovision song contest. There were many nods to Ukraine, as it should have been the hosting and the organisers in Liverpool made sure to include as many references as possible to last year’s winners.

There were also some excellent performances from previous winners as well as a series of musical tributes to Ukraine with a number of cameos appearing in the opening sequence including the Princess of Wales playing the piano, Andrew Lloyd Webber, also on Piano, and last year’s winner Sam Ryder on top of the Liver Building. 

The show itself contained the usual mix of quirky and unusual performances, with crowds in the arena and around the world entertained by twenty six entries in total. Once the voting began it became clear many of the pre-event favourites were likely to perform well. As the voting climaxed it came down to a head-to-head between favourites Sweden and Finland with Loreen ultimately triumphing.

This result made her the second person to win the Eurovision twice, Ireland’s Johnny Logan being the other, and it also means that Sweden joined Ireland as the nation with most Eurovision wins, with both on seven. As a result of this win, Sweden will host the Eurovision on the 50th anniversary of Abba’s win with their hit Waterloo. 

The Final Top Ten

1. Sweden
2. Finland
3. Israel
4. Italy
5. Norway
6. Ukraine
7. Belgium
8. Estonia
9. Australia
10. Czechia

Once again, the pre-event favourites won the contest, this being the fourth time in the last five years this has happened. If we compare the final result with the pre-event odds we can see that there were some surprises too. Ultimately, the top two in the market were the two countries that ended up fighting it out for the win.

Israel were also a correct prediction, finishing third overall and Norway, Ukraine and Italy all ended in the top ten. There were some surprises for some of the ‘big five’ though as Spain, France and United Kingdom all fared far worse than expected, with UK faring particularly poorly as they finished once place off the bottom, a disappointment after the result last year. There were a few unexpected success stories with Belgium and Estonia finding their way into the top ten. 

Pre-event Market

1. Sweden
2. Finland
3. Ukraine
4. Israel
5. Norway
6. France
7. Spain
8. Austria
9. Italy
10. United Kingdom

The theme of this year’s event was ‘United by Music’ and the evening delivered on that. There were numerous nods to the musical history of Liverpool and Ukraine. This was the first time that a nation hosted the contest on behalf of another and will go down as a successful edition of the long-running contest.

The winner could be regarded as a ‘safe choice’ but will also go down in the record books for the reasons mentioned earlier. Sweden will surely be a great host for next year’s event and we look forward to what the next edition of this quirky much-loved music contest will bring. 

Eurovision Quiz

Are you a true fan? Take the test and see how much you know about Eurovision.

---