A First Look At The 2023 Odds (01/01)
Our weekly overviews of the key Eurovision odds and news starts here as we enter 2023 and begin our countdown to Liverpool. Since our first preview of the year last month there have only been a few noteworthy developments but one potentially season defining one.
Pre song favourites and trophy holders Ukraine were fittingly our first confirmed song with Tvorchi narrowly coming through vidbir. The consensus is this was the third best choice that could have been made with odds moving out from the 3-3.5 region up to 6 before coming back in to the 4.4 we see today. Of course, this is less to do with 'Heart Of Steel' than the country sending it and one year ago would have probably been 70+ at this stage of the season. Despite Ukraine operating under different assumptions these days, I do still expect this to suffer the typical 'first favourite drift' when the quality sooner or later comes in.
That said, Ukraine are at least 1 of 2 so far with Albania destined for the 1000+ odds eventually having selected 'Duje'. Another year where the only action around Albania will be on the Q/NQ question.
Away from our selected songs, Israel, The Netherlands, Cyprus and Slovenia all have artists in place with the first two attracting some attention and sneaking downwards in the odds.
Chasing Ukraine at the top we have the usual Sweden and Italy whose National Final lineups are out and include notable former ESC entrants Loreen and Marco Mengoni.
The UK follow being matched at lower prices than day 1 of rehearsals last year and Norway take up their regular spot in the low 20s.
None of the songs floating around in National Finals have yet to get the market as a whole too interested with a couple of nibbles at Belgium and Spain the only action as yet. There’s very much a ‘wait and see vibe’ this year I am already sensing.
The rest of the market is much as normal with the exception of Ireland being considerably shorter than usual, perhaps on expectation the short hop across Irish Sea might inspire RTE.
