ETSC 5: Discover the Winner!

ETSC – Every year, the summer is the calm after the storm so it’s the perfect time to resume the highly anticipated the Eurovision Times Song Contest! 45 of you entered for the July 2016 edition and the voting went on for ten days! And the results are in and we have a winner!

Each summer, a good number of regular readers stay around for different reasons (they don’t get breaks from work or don’t go on holidays…) but there aren’t much news to keep us going. So the last few years we introduced all sort of games. The Eurovision Times Awards (Fridas) and the Douze Points Trivia Quiz kept us going in 2013 and Fridas have made come-backs the past four years. Two years ago, a lot of you asked for a fake Eurovision where each one of us would send songs and get to vote. And that was it: the Eurovision Times Song Contest, from then on known as ETSC.

After a first round open for people to sign up with a country and send a song, we got 45 people in, with a few of our regulars missing (here’s a nod to you Stommie) and a few newbies! Hopefully, they all will make appearances in comments. But also some people who returned from last summer and from FDLC (Sedapsi, Tristian…). Songs were revealed two weeks ago. I made a random draw with my computer. I also made personal postcards for each entry which were revealed along with the songs (everyone can still request to see their own postcards in full size).

Results lasted for 4h! 1327 comments later… You can rewatch the songs by clicking the picture below:

It was two weeks ago that we discovered each song individually in a dramatic night reveal-show. And after that, each of the 45 players cast a vote. All votes are now in and we have a winner (also a full ranking, obviously). So gather around, for “ETSC 5, July 2016″ has come to an end!

This fourth event was officially hosted in Salzburg, Austria after “Leyla” by Thorsteinn Einarsson won “ETSC 4, August 2015″. The official hosts were Elyas M’Barek and Conchita Wurst in the green room! The venue was the Salzburgarena.

Here are the full results (click to see in big):

So the winner is Israel! The song is “Gold Shadow” by Asaf Avidan (in solo from his own group The Mojos). Born in Jerusalem in 1980, Asaf Avidan created the Mojos in 2006 and since then toured triumphally in Europe and the USA. In July 2011 they announced a pause for the group. January 2015 saw Asaf Avidan’s solo album Gold Shadow release! It was chosen for this contest by Mark D, who took part sucessfully in every ETSC so far, finishing 3rd in ETSC 1 and 2, 12th in ETSC 3 and 7th in ETSC 4. The winner got points from 26 people out of 44 possible! It got 179pts total, which is a new ETSC record, and represents 33.9% of possible points (second best to France in ETSC 1 which recieved 47.8%). Asaf is the second male etsc winner in a row, and third overall with The Prick! Here’s a live performance:

Behind Israel’s massive win, it is quite crowded! Sweden was the longest second and ends up as this edition’s runner-up. It’s the best result for the country in ETSC and for its HoD, Gregor, who also got 4th with Sweden two editions ago. Sweden ends with 130pts! The best a runner-up ever had! France, after being 1st twice and 2nd twice has to settle for Bronze. Though it was in the Top 10 for almost all of the voting, the country sinked to 11th before the last four votes where France rushed back and ends up with 115pts. Azerbaijan get its best result at 4th, a great debut entry for HoD Elmar. It ends with 114pts. Tunisia gets 5th with 113pts, Togravus’ second 5th placing after ETSC 1 with Germany. And he is stuck in the 5s after also being 15th, 25th and 35th in prior editions! The top 5 is wrapped up with Croatia, Ukraine, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United-Kingdom.

As for the guessing game, it wasn’t hard this time around apparently. Unlike last edition, all songs in the Top 10 were predicted at least twice! And many people reached 7 out of 10 corrected! True, some hypes were hard to comprehend if we compare to results, but in general the edition delivered rather expected countries in the Top 10 (Israel, Sweden, Ukraine, Netherlands) and others were tipped at least three times (France, Croatia, Tunisia, United-Kingdom). Ireland and Azerbaijan were the only ones predicted only twice. Now if we mathematically take into account all the predictions, here are the results: Nick 301, Dimitris 276, Dino 256, Donnie 250, Tecku 244, Ovidarch 241, Razvan 237, Guitar 231, Elmar 227, Bay 223, Gregor 218, Martin 215, Franco 160, Shevek 115! A very odd result, and close, Gregor got 7 right but is very low for it’s all upside down, when Dimitris and Dino who also have 7 make it to Top 3! With only 6, Nick wins for predicting correctly the Top 2!

As for “ETSC 6 – August 2016″, it will be officially held in East Jerusalem. So we move east and as for venue it’ll be the Al-Hakawati Theater! The logo for it is inspired by the winner again: