Image Source: Eurovision.tv

Tonight is the night! The next winner of the Eurovision Song Contest is going to be crowned! The bookmakers are very sure about their choice this year, but will they actually be right this year? A Bit of Pop Music looks at the bookmakers, the streaming and downloading charts and the running order (with the results of previous years in mind of course) to predict the top 5 of tonight’s grand final!

Bookmakers
Although being the bookies’ favourite does not always guarantee an actual Eurovision victory, it sure is a good indication of which songs stand a chance. Last year, they predicted Israel to win for months, but changed to Cyprus in the last week. As we all know, Israel still won. This year, the bookmakers have tipped the Dutch entry Duncan Laurence, basically from the moment on he presented his song ‘Arcade’. He has stayed on top ever since. During the first week of rehearsals, his odds tumbled a bit (while still remaining number 1), but since this week’s semi final his odds have been going up to a point where he has a 46% winning chance (at the time of writing), followed by the number 2 Australia and 3 Switzerland, with just 11%.

In the past week, a lot has changed behind the Dutch entry. Australia’s Kate Miller Heidke was not even close to the top 10 before the rehearsals started, but impressed everyone with her performance during the first semi final. Russia’s Sergey Lazarev had to watch how his odds kept dropping and instead of a spot in top 3, he is now ninth. Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, France, Iceland and Azerbaijan have been going up and down the top 10 all week, while Norway has been rising since Thursday’s second semi-final. If we look at the percentual odds, The Netherlands is a clear winner with Australia and Switzerland as outsiders.

Image source: Eurovisionworld.com

iTunes and Streaming
If we look at downloading numbers from iTunes and streaming numbers from Spotify according to EscTracker, we find that Duncan Laurence from the Netherlands is already in the streaming top 100 of eight other countries, including a top 10 spot in Lithuania, Iceland and Estonia. On iTunes, he made the top 10 in Sweden and top 100 in eleven countries other than his own. His biggest challenger on both platforms is the Swiss entry Luca Hänni. His ‘She Got Me’ made top 10 in four countries and top 100 in ten countries on iTunes and on Spotify he reached top 100 in six countries, of which two in top 10.

Italy’s Mahmood reached top 100 in six countries on Spotify and five countries on iTunes. Other than that, countries like Sweden, Norway, Malta and Cyprus have reached the top 100 in a handful of countries on Spotify, while Chingiz from Azerbaijan has seven places in the top 100s on iTunes, but did not impress nearly as much on Spotify. Australia, who is a favourite to win according to the bookmakers, did hardly scrape any top 100 on either Spotify or iTunes.

Judging by the number of streams and downloads, the battle for the victory will be between The Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy.

Running Order
This year’s running order was decided by draw and decisions of the producers. Draw decided if the countries would perform in the first half or the second half, while the producers would then plan the rest of the running order to spread out the favourites and songs in a similar genre. It is fair to say that The Netherlands (12th), Switzerland (24th) and Australia (25th) all have a fairly favorable spot. The Netherlands received a spot at the end of the first half, while only Spain performs after Switzerland and Australia. Russia however, has to perform very early on in 5th spot, with still 21 other countries coming after. In the past five years the winner has performed from the 10th, 11th (twice), 21st and 22nd spot. The best song would probably stand out from any spot in the final running order though.

Based on these factors, I predict the following top 5:

01. The Netherlands
02. Switzerland
03. Australia
04. Russia
05. Italy