ET Awards 2015: full results and analysis

Eurovision 2015 – This year we resumed the “Eurovision Times Awards” to give prizes (the Fridas) for the best in every category! And you get to vote! ET regular members made recommendations and open polls were open for a full week and winners were announced. Discover the full results now!

2015 was the third year for Eurovision Times to organize a new contest (you can check 2013’s results here and the 2014’s ones here). As with the past couple of years, our blog hosts now two contests: TEKO which takes place before the contest and the “Eurovision Times Awards” after the contest. The principle of the ET Awards is simple, in each categories, the staff of this website will nominate a few entries per categories and open polls for the public to vote in them so we can reveal afterwards all the winners. The winners recieve an imaginary trophee, entitled the Fridas in hommage to Frida Boccara, the French Eurovision winner in 1969 with “Un jour, un enfant“.

In the past three weeks, the blog has played the game, recommendations, nominations, votes and winners. Now that all polls are closed and winners were announced, it does not harm to reveal the full results. We will also offer an analysis which you will be able to freely comment and disagree with.

Technical Awards

• Best Lyrics
  • 51 Norway (32,1%)
  • 42 France (26,4%)
  • 33 Ireland (20,8%)
  • 18 Romania (11,3%)
  • 15 Latvia (9,4%)
• Best Composition
  • 43 Belgium (26,9%)
  • 39 Estonia (24,4%)
  • 38 Norway (23,8%)
  • 24 Latvia (15%)
  • 16 Sweden (10%)
• Best Female vocals
  • 72 Latvia (41,4%)
  • 40 France (23%)
  • 31 Russia (17,8%)
  • 26 Serbia (14,9%)
  • 5 Portugal (2,9%)
• Best Male vocals
  • 74 Italy (40,4%)
  • 39 Belgium (21,3%)
  • 32 Australia (17,5%)
  • 23 Czech Republic (12,6%)
  • 15 Norway (8,2%)

Artistic Awards

• Best Perfomance
  • 56 Belgium (33,7%)
  • 40 Sweden (24,1%)
  • 32 Estonia (19,3%)
  • 32 Latvia (19,3%)
  • 6 Norway (3,6%)
• Best Props
  • 101 Sweden (62%)
  • 35 Estonia (21,5%)
  • 13 Lithuania (8%)
  • 11 Slovenia (6,8%)
  • 3 Romania (1,8%)
• Best Female looks
  • 45 Latvia (28,7%)
  • 34 Norway (21,7%)
  • 30 Georgia (19,1%)
  • 25 Germany (15,9%)
  • 23 Hungary (14,6%)
• Best Male looks
  • 54 Belgium (34,4%)
  • 48 Italy (30,6%)
  • 26 Sweden (16,6%)
  • 24 Norway (15,3%)
  • 5 Azerbaijan (3,2%)
• Best Backings
  • 53 Belgium (39,8%)
  • 27 Israel (20,3%)
  • 25 Montenegro (18,8%)
  • 18 Hungary (13,5%)
  • 10 Lithuania (7,5%)

Delegation Awards

• Best Backdrop
  • 51 France (37%)
  • 29 Estonia (21%)
  • 23 Latvia (16,7%)
  • 22 Belgium (15,9%)
  • 13 Georgia (9,4%)
• Best Promotion video
  • 50 Norway (42%)
  • 23 Belgium (19,3%)
  • 22 Romania (18,5%)
  • 12 Azerbaijan (10,1%)
  • 12 Georgia (10,1%)
• Best Spokeperson
  • 49 United-Kingdom (32,5%)
  • 30 Netherlands (19,9%)
  • 28 Australia (18,5%)
  • 25 Russia (16,6%)
  • 19 Greece (12,6%)
• Best National final
  • 50 Sweden (45,9%)
  • 31 Latvia (28,4%)
  • 13 Estonia (11,9%)
  • 9 Germany (8,3%)
  • 6 Norway (5,5%)
• Best Internal choice
  • 90 Belgium (65,7%)
  • 21 Australia (15,3%)
  • 14 Montenegro (10,2%)
  • 10 Czech Republic (7,3%)
  • 2 Azerbaijan (1,5%)

Result Awards

• Most Overrated entry
  • 40 Russia (28,6%)
  • 34 Albania (24,3%)
  • 24 Poland (17,1%)
  • 24 Serbia (17,1%)
  • 18 Australia (12,9%)
• Most Underrated entry
  • 44 France (28%)
  • 42 Germany (26,8%)
  • 33 Czech Republic (21%)
  • 25 Austria (15,9%)
  • 13 Switzerland (8,3%)
• Best Song in the top 5
  • 65 Belgium (47,8%)
  • 28 Italy (20,6%)
  • 27 Sweden (19,9%)
  • 8 Australia (5,9%)
  • 8 Russia (5,9%)
• Best Song
  • 32 Belgium (23,9%)
  • 29 Estonia (21,6%)
  • 22 Latvia (16,4%)
  • 21 Sweden (15,7%)
  • 16 Norway (11,7%)
  • 14 Italy (10,2%)

So now we can discuss a bit these results. Raw stats and comparison to the last two years:

• 40 entries this year (37 entries in 2014, 39 in 2013),
• 29 of them got at least 1 nomination for 18 awards (30 in 2014 and 29 in 2013),
• only 8 countries got an award (9 in 2014 and 10 in 2013),
• 5 of them getting more than one Frida (4 in 2014 and 5 in 2013):
• 7 Belgium, 2 Latvia, 2 France, 2 Norway, 2 Sweden, 1 Italy, 1 United-Kingdom, 1 Russia,
  
• Belgium 2015 with 7 awards beats Netherlands 2014 with 6 and Netherlands 2013 with 4 (with Norway 2013 winning only 3 but “Best Entry”)

Winners: obviously Belgium is the biggest winner in this year’s Fridas and so far the best ever in Eurovision Times Awards. 7 is a new record, and it’s 1 more than The Common Linnets’ “Calm After The Storm”. However, both got very similar awards (Best Composition, Best Internal Choice, Best Top 5 Entry and Best Entry) and even share the same runner-up place in “Best Male Vocals”. While Belgium 2015 only got 1 Technical Awards (to no less than 3 for Netherlands 2014), it managed to gather 1 Frida in each Award category thanks to Male Style, Performance and Backings. In general, out of its 10 nominations, Belgium won 7 and finished second for the other three awards. Latvia and Norway were the other two big favorites in the recommendation stage and won 2 each. Not bad, but not as great as expected, since both suffered the competition from Loïc Nottet. They ended up much higher with Female Awards when Belgium could not be nominated and Norway beat Belgium only in Promo video. Sweden, just like in 2013 when the esc winner did better in Fridas than with the regular readers’ recommendations, this year’s winner won 2 Fridas, for what makes Sweden so special in the contest, Gimmicks and National Final. No competition in those awards too as it was a big win (101 pts for the stick figure is the highest pointwise and second %wise behind Internal Choice where Loïc won with more than 65%!) France was a nice little irrelevant entry but out of its four nominations, it won no less than 2 and finished second in the other 2! True, however, besides Backdrop which was an easy win, it won by the smallest margin in this year’s awards for Most Underrated with only 2 votes more than Germany. Last but not least, the United-Kingdom won its first Frida ever, thanks to a nomination I pushed them in.

Losers: the most intriguing case is Estonia. Already the only big favorite that gave us an upset in TEKO, it got many fair recommendations and nominations and sadly did not win a single Frida… However, it finished second no less than 4 times and third 2 more times, being very close to bringing Belgium down only 4 votes behind in Composition and 3 votes behind in Best Entry! So, it can be concluded that Estonia is a very loved entry this year, but in every category it’s only second best to someone else, making it as a whole one of the best entry, mainly overall one of the best packages only just falling to the year’s big favorite. Italy, the televoting and OGAE winner, has definitely fans out there and some of our regulars are big fans. Meaning Italy managed many nominations but only won 1, Male Vocals, which can be seen as a bit of a loss for them. A very significant result is their second place for Top 5 Entry, only 1 vote above Sweden, when they finished 6th and last in Best Entry when Sweden rose to 4th even above Norway. So in general, people like Italy among the entries that did well this year a tiny bit more than the others, but when thrown in against Belgium and Norway and Sweden and Latvia and Estonia, it’s the least liked of these all. Russia keeps winning Overrated even though that was one of the closest awards with Albania, Poland and Serbia battling it out as well! But Russia suffers being the most unpopular country taking part and the fact they almost won it made them the obvious winner in that category. Their Spokeperson won recommendation (ex aequo) but ended only 4th overall. Australia took part for the first (and only?) time and thanks to being top 5 got 5 nominations, doing rather poorly in all including Spokeperson for which they won recommendation (ex aequo) but only finished 3rd even behind the popular Dutch spokeperson Edsilia!

What do you think of these results? Did you enjoy these three weeks of Frida? If you have any recommendations on making ET Awards better, for 2016, they’ll be highly appreciated and taken into careful consideration. Hope it was fun and you’re not too mad about some of these results!

Don’t forget, ETSC 3 – July 2015, will open soon! So stay tune on our blog!