Odds Review- Week Ending 07/02
The first really busy week of the Eurovision season has not actually led to much market activity. A combination of expected results and few contenders being revealed will do that, but here’s the biggest news:
In Lithuania, The Roop won the national final with one of the biggest margins ever seen, securing a perfect score from the juries, and over 80% of the televote. Emphatic doesn’t begin to cover it. Of course, this result was also the most predictable in a long time (get out of here you Gebrasy hipsters) so had little effect on the market, where attentions were focused on the staging and performance. Lithuania are still in that 10s region, with backers still satisfied and layers still confident. For any hope of a win, the performance must improve much further but at this stage it’s hard to argue against 10s much.
Ukraine and Go_A have gone back on their word by including and then selecting ‘Shum’ as their entry. Given the other two snippets this was a wise choice. ‘Shum’ is going for a bit more of a wacky audience than Solovey and the staging which I’d say needs a big pyro budget could be quite something. Ukraine remain above 3 figures despite a bit more love, with juries likely to bury this.
Croatia have released their Dora snippets with the talking points being the return of Nina Kraljic with an interesting number and Borislav Milanov finally offloading that ‘Colours’ track. Tick Tock is also a reasonable attempt. Honestly though Dora is an unpredictable national final at the best of times and it’s best waiting to see what happens next saturday.
Germany are playing a risky game with the selection of Jendrik Sigwart who is German, and 26. That’s pretty much it. Best case scenario might be something like Gianluca’s ‘Tomorrow’ (Malta 2013) but it’s hard not to be sceptical. Germany have, on paper, been doing the right things the last few years but keep making some poor decisions. The market is unimpressed, queuing up to lay this and Germany can expect to drift further.
Over in Sweden, Melodifestivalen is underway and the usual 1-2 tick drift following an unimpressive semi can be expected. This year there’s less of a clear Eurovision contender in the lineup, with all the Melfest favourites having issues on paper. One to watch in the coming weeks.
Finland have suffered quite the drop over the last week and are now a more reasonable price. They may shorten back if ‘Dark Side’ does pull through although there’s no real contender here. Further silence from Armenia makes them big fallers too whilst Portugal have climbed up into the top half of the odds. Carolina Deslandes is the favourite there and has a pretty certain nq, second favourite ‘Saudade’ is probably the one doing the trick here and is Portugal’s best hope for qualification but does not justify a move like that.
