Eurovision Song Contest 2019

Netta Barzilai’s victory with “Toy” in the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest earned Israel the right to host the following edition.[3] Eurovision’s hosting tradition gives the winning performer’s homeland the opportunity to stage the next year’s competition, making the 2019 event a consequence of Israel’s musical success the previous year.[7] The European Broadcasting Union and Israel’s public broadcaster Kan selected Tel Aviv for the 64th edition of the competition.[6] It was Israel’s third time hosting: the two previous Israeli editions had taken place in Jerusalem in 1979 and 1999.[6]

Eurovision is an annual singing competition produced by the European Broadcasting Union.[7] Its institutional basis is broadcasting membership rather than simply geographic location: the union consists of public broadcasting networks, and its members produce the competition.[7] Israel joined the EBU in 1957, first appeared in Eurovision in 1973, and had won four times by the 2019 event.[8] Israel declined to host in 1980 because of financial strain and a conflict with the country’s memorial day for fallen soldiers.[8]

The host-city selection considered bids from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Eilat.[9] Tel Aviv’s practical arrangements were central to the announced decision: EBU executive supervisor Jon Ola Sand said the city provided the best overall setup for the event.[10] The city agreed to cover the venue costs and planned Eurovision-related activities in the days preceding the live broadcasts.[6] The chosen venue was the EXPO Tel Aviv International Convention Center, with the first semifinal scheduled for May 14, the second for May 16, and the grand final for May 18.[11][1]

Jerusalem’s possible role had generated substantial public discussion before the selection.[6] Culture Minister Miri Regev argued that Israel should surrender its hosting rights if the competition could not take place there, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it could be held elsewhere in the country.[6] Some Israeli ministers favored Jerusalem, but preparations also involved concerns that countries might decline to participate there or that hosting could become a means of promoting Israel’s position on the city, parts of which Palestinians also claim.[12] These questions made the venue decision politically sensitive before the contest itself began.[12]

The choice of city was not the only organizational issue requiring agreement.[9] The EBU sought guarantees concerning visas regardless of visitors’ political views, freedom of speech and press for participants, the ability to rehearse on Shabbat, and the independence of Kan.[9] These conditions intersected with Israeli entry policies affecting boycott supporters and with objections from ultra-Orthodox leaders to rehearsals on Shabbat.[9] They therefore connected the production’s operational requirements to domestic debates about religious observance, broadcasting, and admission to the country.[9]

Shabbat scheduling also affected the process of choosing Israel’s performer.[8] Shalva Band, a group of musicians with disabilities, would not take part in the required Shabbat rehearsals; Regev sought an exception, and the EBU declined the request.[8] The group’s withdrawal preceded the eventual selection of Kobi Marimi as Israel’s representative.[8] Preparations for visitors included Mayor Ron Huldai’s announcement of free Friday and Saturday shuttles to and from the arena, alongside an online opportunity for tourists to arrange Shabbat dinners with local hosts.[8]

Early participation announcements anticipated a slightly larger field than ultimately competed.[11] In November 2018, 42 countries were expected to travel to Israel, while Bulgaria’s absence was explained by financial difficulties.[11] Ukraine subsequently withdrew, and the competition proceeded with 35 countries entering the semifinals.[7] The completed event had 41 participating countries, including Israel, Australia, and the Netherlands.[4] The earlier expectation of 42 entrants and the later total of 41 thus belong to different stages of the preparations rather than to a single final participation count.[7][11]

Before the event, commentators also considered its potential effect on Israel’s international profile.[13] Hosting was presented as an opportunity for cultural image-building and public diplomacy, with approximately 20,000 international tourists and participation by 41 countries forecast before the event.[13] That tourism figure was a projection, not a final attendance count.[13] An approaching-event commentary similarly interpreted Eurovision as both a cultural contest and a politically consequential occasion, while observing that boycott pressure had not caused countries to withdraw.[8]

The first semifinal took place on May 14, followed by the second semifinal on May 16 and the grand final on May 18 at Expo Tel Aviv.[1] Thirty-five countries participated in the semifinal stage after Ukraine’s withdrawal.[7] Twenty finalists advanced from the two semifinals, joining six countries that had qualified directly.[11] Israel entered the final automatically as the reigning champion, alongside France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, the five major contributing European countries.[11] This produced a final of 26 acts, while all 41 participating countries supplied votes.[11][14]

The competition operated within rules governing both the songs and their presentation.[7] Songs had to be under three minutes, and the release-date requirement used September 1, 2018, as the cutoff for the 2019 edition.[7] Rules also limited the number and age of performers, prohibited animals, and restricted swearing and political messages in lyrics.[7] Voting combined the judgments of national juries with audience participation: participating countries selected juries of five entertainment professionals, while viewers could vote by text message.[3] Jury points and televote points together determined the winner.[3]

The final was presented by Erez Tal, Bar Refaeli, Assi Azar, and Lucy Ayoub.[15] Its opening included a tribute featuring Israeli Eurovision performers Netta Barzilai, Dana International, Ilanit, and Nadav Guedj.[15] The presentation of the 26 finalists used an aircraft-like stage set from which the performers appeared.[15] The broadcast lasted approximately four hours, bringing the live competition and its surrounding performances to a worldwide television audience.[2] Contemporary coverage discussed the staging, the semifinals, and the excitement surrounding the production.[2]

The event extended well beyond the convention center.[12] Tel Aviv established its Eurovision Village at Charles Clore Park, with food stalls, attractions, performances, and large screens carrying the semifinals and final.[1] Preparations anticipated 300,000 visitors over the week-long event, and the site was described as the largest Eurovision Village in the competition’s history.[1] One of its distinctive installations was a four-meter sculpture of Netta Barzilai made from toys donated by local kindergartens, honoring her winning song “Toy.”[1] The sculpture connected the public celebrations directly to the Israeli victory that had brought the contest to the country.[1]

On the night of the final, the convention center held a full house of 7,300 people, while approximately 70,000 additional fans watched at the Eurovision Village.[12] The Village hosted concerts and other activities throughout the preceding week, with reported attendance of approximately 500,000 over that period.[12] The forecast of 300,000 visitors and the later report of 500,000 therefore describe an initial expectation and a subsequent account of the week’s turnout.[1][12] Together with the live audience inside Expo Tel Aviv, the park screenings provided a second major setting for experiencing the competition in the host city.[12]

The Netherlands won with “Arcade,” performed by Duncan Laurence.[5] Laurence’s songwriting credits for the entry included Joel Sjöö and Wouter Hardy.[16] The victory was the Netherlands’ first since 1975.[5] Italy placed second, Russia third, and Switzerland fourth.[14] Israel’s representative, Kobi Marimi, performed “Home” and finished in 23rd place.[14] Final-night reporting initially gave Laurence 492 points and Marimi 47, before a subsequent correction to the Belarusian jury calculation changed their totals.[17][14]

Boycott campaigns continued to form part of the surrounding political debate, but the participating acts performed in Israel.[12] Iceland’s Hatari had publicly expressed opposition to Israel before the competition and later displayed Palestinian banners while its votes were being announced.[8][5] Madonna’s performance included dancers wearing Israeli and Palestinian flags; the performance ended with two dancers displaying the respective flags embracing.[5] The EBU said the flag displays had not been approved and reiterated that Eurovision was a non-political event.[12] It also said Hatari’s display contradicted the contest’s rules and could have consequences.[12]

Other concerns surrounding the week included the threat of Hamas rockets, budget disagreements between Kan and the Israeli government, and Madonna’s contract with the EBU.[2] Despite these issues and the attention given to Hatari’s activism, the international media gathered for the event devoted more attention to the competition, its staging, and the excitement of the broadcasts.[2] The final consequently took place within a politically charged environment while remaining, in much of the immediate coverage, primarily a large live entertainment production.[2] By May 19, following the week of festivities and the final broadcast, Tel Aviv had begun returning to its usual routines.[2]

The most consequential post-contest administrative development was the correction of the Belarusian jury result.[14] Belarus’s jury result had been invalidated after its members publicly disclosed their votes before the final, contrary to contest rules.[14] A substitute result was generated through an algorithm rather than accepted from the original jury.[14] The replacement calculation involved voting partner Digame and used countries with similar voting histories to construct an alternative result.[14]

Human error in the calculation caused an incorrect Belarusian score to appear in the final-night table.[14] The EBU subsequently revoked the erroneous jury points and corrected the totals.[14] Israel lost the 12 points it had initially received from the Belarusian replacement jury, leaving it with 35 televote points rather than the 47 points shown on final night.[14][5] Its position remained 23rd.[14] The Netherlands’ revised winning total was 498 points, compared with the 492 reported at the end of the broadcast.[17][14]

The correction changed some rankings but did not alter the winner or the composition of the top four.[14] The Netherlands remained ahead of Italy, Russia, and Switzerland, while the televoting calculation was unaffected.[14] For Israel, the distinction was between a lower corrected point total and an unchanged final placing: the removal of the Belarusian jury award did not move Marimi out of 23rd position.[14] The result therefore requires separating the figures seen during the broadcast from the revised official calculation published afterward.[14][5]

Later audience reporting placed the worldwide television audience at 182 million, four million fewer than the previous year.[18] This figure followed contemporary estimates that the show might reach approximately 200 million viewers.[2] In Israel, 1.3 million people watched the final.[18] The first semifinal drew 699,000 Israeli viewers, and the second drew 691,000.[18] Iceland registered the highest reported national audience share, at 98.4 percent.[18] These television figures were distinct from the thousands present inside the arena and the large crowds attending Tel Aviv’s public Eurovision Village.[12][18]

The event also became the subject of longitudinal research on political attitudes.[19] One study compared Israeli respondents’ views six months before the competition with their views immediately after Israel hosted it.[19] Its summary reports that watching the Eurovision final increased sympathy for the European Union among Israeli respondents.[19] The available summary does not provide the sample size or detailed statistical results.[19] Its reported finding concerns attitudes associated with watching the final, rather than the contest’s musical rankings or the host city’s attendance figures.[19]

A separate peer-reviewed longitudinal study examined the competition’s influence on national identity among Israeli Jews.[20] Its abstract reports different effects among people exposed and not exposed to the event, including cultural patriotism and increased chauvinism alongside some cosmopolitan effects.[20] The study thus identified more than one kind of identity response rather than a single uniform effect of hosting.[20] Both research summaries treated the competition as an event with consequences extending beyond entertainment, examining changes in political sympathy and national identification after the broadcasts.[19][20]

A survey conducted during the opening days of the competition found that many Jewish respondents associated the production with national pride and Israel’s international standing.[21] The telephone and online survey questioned 600 adults in Israel on May 13–14, 2019.[21] Among Jewish respondents, 72 percent said Eurovision expressed national pride to a great or very great extent.[21] Seventy percent associated it with Israel’s place in the international community, 69 percent with an open and cultured state, and 67 percent with a strong and flourishing state.[21] These responses recorded perceptions of the production at the time of the contest, before the final result.[21]

Responses differed substantially between Jewish and Arab participants.[21] Among Arab respondents, the most common of the reported perceptions was that Israel was part of the international community, selected by 32 percent.[21] Between 25 and 35 percent of Arab respondents did not answer these questions.[21] The survey’s maximum margin of error for the full sample was ±4.1 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.[21] Its subgroup results therefore need to be read alongside the reported nonresponse and the methodological information supplied for the overall sample.[21]

The survey also asked how boycott threats and possible public protests might affect perceptions of Israel.[21] Respondents most often identified possible harm to national pride and to the perception of Israel as part of the international community.[21] Thirty-six percent said such threats could harm national pride to a great extent, and 35 percent gave that answer concerning Israel’s international standing.[21] Many Arab respondents again did not answer these questions.[21] The findings show that the public significance attached to the production included both pride in hosting and concern about efforts to disrupt its international reception.[21]

Interpretations of the host-city choice remained sharply political.[10] A BESA Center Perspectives Paper argues that selecting Tel Aviv instead of Jerusalem benefited the BDS movement and characterizes the decision as denying Jerusalem the event.[10] That argument rests partly on its assertion that Eurovision protocol called for the winning country’s capital to host.[10] The broader hosting tradition documented elsewhere gives the winning country the right to host without specifying its capital, so the claim that Jerusalem was required by protocol is an interpretation rather than an established condition of the event.[7][10]

Boycott advocacy likewise generated competing interpretations of the competition’s cultural meaning.[10] The same BESA Center paper criticizes a campaign called “No to Eurovision Pinkwashing,” describing support from more than 60 LGBTQ groups, and discusses a PLO demand that organizers not broadcast the contest in Israeli settlements.[10] Fatah promoted a boycott during the week before the final, and cartoons in Fatah and Palestinian Authority publications responded to the event.[22] Earlier calls to boycott or relocate the competition included a September 2018 appeal by European arts figures and Roger Waters’s request that the EBU hold it in another country.[23]

The dispute over Hatari also preceded the final-night banner display.[23] UK Lawyers for Israel wrote to executive supervisor Jon Ola Sand urging the Icelandic act’s disqualification on the grounds that its planned performance and song allegedly violated the competition’s non-political rules.[23] The complaint invoked a rule identifying Eurovision as a non-political event and prohibiting political causes, lyrics, speeches, and gestures.[23] The request represented an allegation about compliance, while the EBU’s later response to the actual banner display stated that the gesture contradicted the rules.[23][12]

The contest’s legacy consequently includes both a major Israeli cultural production and a record of arguments about how international entertainment intersects with politics.[12][21] Its public celebrations drew large crowds in Tel Aviv, its final reached a worldwide television audience of 182 million, and its Israeli opening connected the new production with performers from the country’s Eurovision history.[12][18] The studies of European sympathy and national identity subsequently examined how exposure to the event could accompany both outward-looking attitudes and stronger national identification.[19][20] These documented responses place the 2019 edition within the history of Israeli cultural participation abroad as well as the history of the song competition itself.[19][20]