0/5

Israel wins Eurovision 2018!

Israel's Netta is the toast of Europe winning Eurovision with "Toy."

Israel has won the Eurovision Song Contest with Netta’s “Toy” scoring 529 points.

Cyprus was second with 436 points and Austria third with 342 points. Austria also won the jury votes.

First and second placings reflected the two favourites as predicted by the bookies.

Australia finished with 99 points, in #20th place, pulling the lowest televoting result of just 9 points and leaving commentators Joel Creasey & Myf Warhurst lost for words. It was our lowest placing across our 4 appearances.

Lisbon turned on a spectacular show at Altice Arena with infectious pop, powerful ballads, opera, heavy metal, country and slapstick. Songs this year were marked by themes surrounding anti-bullying, #MeToo, asylum seekers, anti-terrorism and same-sex romance.

The evening was marred by a protester bursting onstage during a performance by the United Kingdom. SuRie was momentarily thrown but continued on as security grabbed the protestor, with added encouragement from the crowd. Respect. Last year a Ukrainian streaker interrupted the show draped in an Aussie flag.

Australian spokesperson Ricardo Goncalves with a Bondi beach backdrop delivered Australia’s 12 jury points to Sweden.

This post updates.

50 Responses

  1. we need backup dancers and quirky staging. You can’t expect to win Eurovision by just singing a song. Look at France – hasn’t worked for years.

  2. I enjoy Eurovision for what it is a singing contest that is fun, quirky at times with some great songs thrown in. I thought We got Love was a good song and thought it would be a top 10 song but there you go. I have heard it is charting well overseas No1 in Malta, top 40 in the UK and top 10 in Sweden to name a few.

    Looking forward to next year in Israel.

  3. I read news on a community radio station. A couple of years ago, the news director made sure to call and say “Whatever you do – Do Not Spoil Eurovision” in your bulletin (i do 5pm and 6pm) only for the program on air at the time to spend 10-15minutes yabbering about the winner before I even did the bulletin!

  4. Obviously we are not supposed to be there. A special guest once was supposed to be it. Surely this is the time to start the — PacificVision — contest of our own. Now that would have lots of better cultures and variety. Where is the new Molly !

    1. There was supposed to be an Asiavision in October but pretty sure that won’t be happening now as China got banned from screening Eurovision due to censoring two performances this year due to LGBT themes and the presence of tatoos. Without China Asiavision can’t happen.

  5. Surprised Australia did so badly but it was easily your worst effort so far. Last night though really highlighted the disconnect between the juries and the viewer vote and I think it’s time the grand final at least went back to televote only – trust the fans. They gave you the overall winner anyway, as generally speaking is the case anyway.

    Also the new voting reveal isn’t as exciting as they make out – they’ve loaded all the “excitement” on the final minute making the jury vote reveals feel pretty pointless. It was much more gratifying seeing the points build over an hour to slowly reveal the winner – and if that sometimes was a few votes early so be it.

    1. This disconnect has probably always been there hidden behind the old voting system. Some exceptionally stark examples this time though. The divergence on the Danish entry, for example, is particularly hard to fathom.

    2. I hope you didn’t mean that –“your worst effort so far”……….surely the worst result so far, but not the worst effort !!

  6. The winning song did not appeal to me at all … it was way too gimmicky. Chicken sounds. Good grief!

    Maybe Europe wanted to outshine ‘Boaty McBoatyface’.

  7. With such a very wide range of countries competing, it’s almost impossible to present a song that appeals to a majority, before we even get to the political aspect that has always been part of ESC. (Greece give 12 points to Cyprus, Cyprus gives 12 points to Greece – every single year)
    Take a look at K-pop or Japanese popular music- geographically very much closer to Australia, but completely different tastes. The winning entry this year (Israel) was almost techno-pop, a style that hasn’t been popular in Australia for at least the past decade and never took hold in the USA whatsoever.
    Knowing the market is vital, and Mauboy wasn’t it.

    1. It was looking like finally a year where somebody would not raise this…. it’s not a spoiler, the event took place this morning and was broadcast Live on SBS. That makes it news.

      1. ABC, news.com.au and every other media I saw today managed to not have the winner on their homepage. Considering theres a primetime replay where the majority of the audience will I dont think its unreasonable to not broadcast the winner so overtly. The winner can be covered in the story, like other media outlets.

          1. Your site your rules but after about 10 years of almost daily browsing I dont think I’ll be returning

          2. Entirely your call. I accept Spoilers is contentious and we won’t always agree on best practice. Appreciate the patronage, I hope the site was of value.

          3. Oh agree. So tired of hearing people complain about “Spoilers” .. this site always informs. I’d like to know what a suitable “time frame” is for these people to be happy for you to report on entertainment news. Keep up the good work. Your policy works fine for the VAST majority!!!

      1. I’ve been out all day with my mum celebrating Mother’s Day. I check my favourite blog out and it’s spoilt Eurovision for me as after dinner we were going to watch the prime-time showing together. What a disappointing result. ?

        1. Hi Saxy (if I can call you that), with respect you are a long term visitor to the site and the clear Spoiler policy has been in place for years. I don’t change it randomly, which would only confuse people. As a dedicated entertainment site it is important to keep up the pace of breaking entertainment news. It just isn’t practical to wait for every individual’s habits. The result was broadcast by 9am AEST. Before the Live broadcast I always waited for primetime, despite it being published everywhere. Please refer to About page.

        1. Yes David you can call me Saxy. I was too busy this morning to watch TV or listen to the radio. It’s not a spoiler once the results have aired. I don’t expect the prime-time replay to gave many viewing.

          1. Oops typo. It should be “get many viewing”. While I wasn’t expecting Jess to win I thought she would make it into the top 10.

    2. @Jezzanew – After 10 years of browsing TV Tonight almost daily, you haven’t noticed that every year since Eurovision started being shown live in Australia that David has done the article in this way, seems odd to me.

  8. Unless Sony and SBS have a financial case for continuing, it’s time to put this to bed. Australia will never win a popular vote. Also, winning is not about having a great song or a great singer.

  9. I’m with David – I get a sense that there is a sentiment against Australia being there, or at the very least not to win the thing. Perhaps the close-call of Dami of finishing second has resulted in a backlash? While there is no formula to winning Eurovision, Jessica’s performance was pretty impressive, my personal fave from all of Australia’s entries to date.

  10. This is about the point at which Australia has to start realising that not everyone we’re going to put up is superduperfantasmagorical, and if we keep talking them up breathlessly each year, disappointment is inevitable.

  11. Oh it was so cruel ! I was with Joel in that every time they said Austria, my heart skipped a beat thinking they were going to say Australia ! Very disappointing that Jess scored so low when she was obviously outstanding.

  12. Eurovision is about pop songs and spectacel, which is very faddish, and the popular voting is about European national and regional rivalries, a tradition going back decades. The EBU is happy to have Australia in the competition because one amongst 40+ doesn’t make much difference and SBS pays them. And while they do have a plan for someone else to host it if we win, it would wreck the traditions of the event and most of Europe would rather see that not happen, even when we have technically good songs. And there won’t ever be enough votes coming from Australia, a small country on the other side of the world where the competition is seen as a joke, to change that

  13. David just a small clarification that the Ukrainian streaker last year interrupted Jamelia’s performance during the voting break and not the winning song of Portugal. And beyond shocked at getting the lowest public vote for a song which I think was our best of the 4 we’ve sent. Has Europe now made it clear they don’t want us anymore?

  14. Not surprised by Israel, I voted for her. The biggest surprise was Jessica only getting 9 points from the televotes. She deserved so much better.

      1. They want to expand the contest but it will always favour Europe and many points are political IE voting for neighbouring countries. I thought Jessica’s song choice let her down.

          1. Agreed! The staging was very bland and forgettable, focusing just on Jess, which perhaps would have worked if she was singing a ballad but for a pop song they could’ve done so much more. Jess was fantastic though.

          2. Agreed. The staging looked really cheap, which is a shame because she was so great.

          3. Yes, it looked like a very cheap episode of The Voice.
            Australia can really not expect to win, maybe the judges choice, but we can’t even do the televote.

          4. I honestly think that yes the juries and the public marked us down but thats because it was one of the strongest finals ever with a lot of quality songs and Jess’s song and staging did not stand out enough. It would make us look like sore losers if we pulled out because of one bad result.

      2. Well Europe may not want Australia to win, but they wanted them in the final. The breakdown has been released and the televoters had Australia in 7th place, with the Jury votes for 4th. I was surprised, its a good song, I just don’t think it’s a Eurovision song for wider Europe to love it.
        Same with Ireland’s song, I thought it was too “Niall Horan” but obviously got behind it being Irish, It did better than I expected it to.

      3. It’s a question that needs asking. The song was easily among the best half dozen and I don’t think the final result, particularly the public vote, can be easily explained by perceived “lacklustre staging”.

        1. CB She was ranked 12th with the juries, its the public that let us down. I always thought that we wouldnt get higher than mid table with that song and staging though.

Leave a Reply