Eurovision 2019 Trivia : More numbers and records

As the lights and the glitter from Saturday’s grand final are fading out, the trivia and figures from this year’s contest start to become fans’ discussion and arguments on sites, blogs and social media groups.  Take a look at this year’s trivia and bizarre facts:

1. For the first time the top 4 places on the scoreboard are male solo artists (Duncan Laurence, Mahmood, Sergey Lazarev, Luca Hänni), followed by the two male acts and one female of Keiino, while until the 11th place the only female acts we see are  Tamara Todevska and Kate Miller-Heidke. A total of 19 solo male acts competed which is a record for the last 5 years.
2.  We had 5 comebacks of acts  (Serhat, Sergey Lazarev, Josi Papai, Tamara Todevska, Nevena Božović)  while Jurij Veklenko had participated in the backing vocalists in the past .
3. This year’s victory for The Netherlands came 44 years after the country’s last win (1975-2019). This is the 2nd biggest time gap for a country to win. The biggest one was for Austria which won in 2014 , 48 years after its victory in 1966. The only country that can break that record next year is Spain who hasn’t won since 1969.
4.  From Day 1 the betting odds favored The Netherlands as the winner, without any changes for the bookies. This hasn’t happened since 2012 when Sweden and “Euphoria” were bookies’ favorite to win from the start till the end. Last year Netta with song “Toy” almost accomplished the same but was passed by Eleni Foureira the last days before the final. .
5.  The Netherlands with this year’s victory reach France , the U.K and Luxembourg which also have 5 wins. Sweden remains with 6 victories while Ireland maintains the throne with a total of 7 wins.
6.  Duncan Laurence is the 11th solo male act to win the contest. Taking a look at the awards in Eurovision story only 27 of them went to males either solo, or as members of a duet or a group.
7.  For a second time after 40 years The Netherlands hosts the contest just after Israel had hosted it. Για δεύτερη φορά μετά από ακριβώς 40 χρόνια η Ολλανδία διοργανώνει τον διαγωνισμό μετά από το Ισραήλ. In 1980 the contest was hosted in Hague as Israel declined to host it for a second consecutive year. This was the fourth and last time the contest was hosted on Dutch territory.
8.  Its the 2nd time since 2016 the winner didn’t top either the televoting  nor the jury voting.
9.  Sergey Lazarev participated for a second time and accomplished to finish again 3rd. This has been achieved only by Katja Ebstein(GER 70-3rd, GER 71-3rd, GER 80-2nd). Sergey’s 2nd participation came after three years from his first one.
10.  Italy achieved  another 2nd place within the decade (2011-2019).
11.  Switzerland which came 4th this year hadn’t seen a top 1o place since 2005 when it came 8th and a top 5 place since 1993 when it had came 3rd. 
12.  San Marino was represented second time by a Turkish act and was the second time it qualified to the final. Serhat’s 19th placing is the best one for the small country in its Eurovision history. 
13.  Serhat used three words in Turkish. The language hasn’t been heard in Eurovision since 2008. His song mentioned the word “Na” 248 times. 
14.  Three out of  BIG 5 countries finished in the Bottom 5: Spain 22nd, Germany 24th (with zero points from the public vote) and the United Kingdom 26th.
15. The host country awarded its points within the arena as the points were announced by its first winner Izhar Cohen (ISR 78). It was the first time a host country honored all of its past winners and its first participating act, Ilanit.
16.  Ireland which came 18th and last in its semi final and Armenia (16th in the semi final) scored their worst all time result. The same worst result for Romania which came 13th in its semi final.Το ίδιο έκανε η Ρουμανία (13η στον ημιτελικό). 
17.  Greece scored its worst place in the final and the worst of all time. In 2015, 2017 and 2019 the country received less televoting points then jury votes.  
18.  Norway topped the televoting with 291 points while the juries placed the country 15th. The opposite happened with Sweden which was placed 2nd by the juries contradicting the televoting results.  Norway not only came 15th in the jury voting but performed 15th both in the semi final and the grand final. It was the 2nd time the country included Laponic elements in the entry, the first time was back in 1980. 
19.  During Norway’s jury rehearsal the screen went white. Although the Norwegian delegation reacted, EBU refused to accept a repeat of the performance. 
20. A total of  35 Eurostars got involved in this year’s contest either as backing vocalists , or spokespersons or commentators or the Euroclub. This a record number. 
21.  Hungary’s  last time to fail to qualify to the final was ten years ago. 
22.  Tamara Todevska in 2008 came 10th in the semi final but the juries who decided then left her out of the final. This year she topped the jury voting and achieved the country’s best results coming 7th. 
23.  Out of 26 countries only 7 used other language than English  (Αλβανία, Σλοβενία, Γαλλία, Ισλανδία, Ιταλία, Σερβία, Ισπανία). Denmark for the first time included some French and German with some Danish too. 
24.  From the non qualifiers to the final we had national languages from : Croatia, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Georgia. 
25.  7 out of 10 national juries who awarded 12 points to Sweden were coming from Central and Northern European countries. Further more 9 out of 11 countries that gave Russia 12 points in televoting belong to the Ex Soviet block. 
26.  5 non participating countries (USA, Canada, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Ukraine), aired the contest , with or without commentators. Among these states was the region of Kosovo too.
27.  Following a special agreement three  livestreams aired the contest for people with hearing , vision and mental disabilities. 
28. During the first semi final   hackers attacked the Israeli live stream broadcast. The several technical issues brought visual problems  (Germany, UK), and sound problems to several countries. (Poland, The Netherlands, North Macedonia, French).
29.  The Belarusian national jury voting was dismissed and was replaced by a mix of national jury votes from Armenia, Azerbaijan , Russia and Georgia but in a reversed ranking. 
30.  Two national jury jurors, from Czech Republic and Sweden made a mistake casting their votes the wrong way down. The same had happened to a juror in Denmark in 2016.
31.  This year’s Eurovision album has already entered the charts in several countries such as in UK (#8), Germany (#3) and Australia (#47).
32.  For the first time a representative of a country  (John Lundvik from Sweden) was in the same contest the composer of an other county’s entry (UK) 
33.  The youngest contestant  (Zena- 17 yo) and the oldest (Serhat -54 yo ) competed in the same semi final and both qualified to the grand final.
34.  For the first time in the 21st century two out of the seven countries -founders of the competition was in the first two positions. In the 29th century this happened in 1957,1957,1986 ans 1990. And apart from Luxembourg that has withdrawn since 1993 all other six countries were present. 
35.  18 out of 41 entries had in their title only one word.
36.  A total of 205 people formed the national juries, 
37. After this year’s edition the all time total of Eurovision entries has reached the number  1564.
38.  28 million euro were spent for this year’s edition which was watched by a total of 182 million viewers.
39.  A total of 4756  points were awarded in the final while in all three shows  9512 points were given away
40.  Cyprus remains the country with the most participations without scoring a victory. The east Mediterranean country is followed by Malta and Iceland.