Odds Review: Week Ending 23/04
With Eurojury upon us the market has been seeing it's annual shakeup and there's no place to start with other than France who have been the big overperformer so far, seeing their odds more than halve. It's no surprise to see France doing well per say, but to see them closer to Sweden at the top than they are to the rest of the pack does raise an eyebrow. The 2nd- 12th positions felt and still do feel rather congested but ‘Evidement’ is currently picking up a significant number of points and is very rarely being overlooked. Such consensus does surprise for this entry. Whilst I've been one of the least keen on its chances, the core Eurovision betting community have also been much more sceptical than the more casual reviewers and fan community. Despite the market move, the fact we're still at 20+ for an entry 3rd in ogae and 2nd in Eurojury does tell a tale of remaining scepticism that the lack of a live performance in a competitive environment does not solely account for. I'll save further thoughts for our final pre rehearsal preview coming next week with a greater sample size but for now I still have questions.
In better news for my fancied entries Italy in bronze so far is a strong showing, slightly ahead of where I'd say they need to be at this stage. From lower down the odds Cyprus will be encouraged a top 10 could be within reach.
For underperformers I would pick out Czechia and Ukraine, both of whom are about 5 positions down on my minimum expectation. I would expect Ukraine to do better in a Eurovision setting but the drift is more than reasonable. Czechia on paper should be appealing much more than it is and I think we can pretty safely write them off at this stage from a top 4. One of my other e/w fancies Israel might also wish to be a couple of spots up, whilst the enigma that is Spain continues to be in the picture but not really at the top of it- for doubters there’s more cause for concern than optimism although they remain in acceptable range. From entries with lower ambitions, The Netherlands and Estonia are well off track for songs with “more jury appeal“ even if this isn’t quite as friendly an environment. Both are shaping up as bottom 5 contenders, should they qualify of course.
Finland and Austria are both currently on the lower end of expectations too whilst it’s par the course for Switzerland and leaders Sweden. Loreen was expected to take this comfortably and whilst the gap to France is narrow, Sweden backers will be reassured with the lead vs the rest. Norway are ticking over well but again in line with preconceptions really and the same applies to The UK who I expect to see a sizeable drop of from in a live environment. Belgium is doing far better than it has any right to with the more bubble elements of the eurojury composition coming to the fore- I wouldn’t read a whole lot into this one…
As always with Eurojury, the key to any analysis is based on assigning ranges and identifying which entries perform better or worse in the real, live environment rather than taking the order at face value. Expect some to be spot on, a couple to have significant difference (usually staging based) and most to have some deviation.
