THE DIRECTOR OF the Eurovision Song Contest has said it will “look at the promotion of acts by their delegations and associated parties” to ensure “such promotion is not disproportionally affecting” the audience voting.

It comes after Eurovision News Spotlight, an independent news branch of the EBU, published a report which found that an Israeli government agency paid for adverts targeting the Eurovision public vote.

The Israeli Government Advertising Agency, which serves various government offices, placed advertisements across Google products, such as YouTube, and provided instructions on how to vote up to 20 times for the country’s representative.

While such promotion is permitted, concern has been raised that this runs against the spirit of the contest.

Voting in Eurovision can be done through the official app (with a limit of 20 votes per person, each costing €0.99), as well as via telephone and SMS.

Israel’s entrant, Yuval Raphael, finished in second place and her performance received 297 public votes—the highest number of public votes for any act in the Grand Final.

Israel had ranked 14th after the jury vote and ended up coming second to Austria after the audience votes were included.

Analysis carried out by Eurovision News Spotlight of a20 YouTube account created on 20 April, with the username @Vote4NewDayWillRise, found that it published 89 videos between 6 May and 16 May, amassing over 8.3 million views.

Meanwhile, Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE this week called on Eurovision organisers to investigate the Spanish televote, after the country gave its highest score to Israeli act Yuval Raphael.

Here at home, RTÉ also “requested a breakdown in voting numbers from the EBU”, which is essentially an alliance of public service media organisations whose countries are within the European Broadcasting Area.

In an open letter today by the director of the Eurovision, Martin Green, he said that EBU “will be looking at is the promotion of our acts by their delegations and associated parties”.

While Green said “such promotion is allowed”, he added: “We want to ensure that such promotion is not disproportionally affecting the natural mobilization of communities and diasporas we see in all entertainment audience voting.”

He also acknowledged that “all audience voting shows evidence of the motivation of communities or diasporas around certain contestants”.

“This can be for many reasons,” said Green, “including personal attributes, back stories, geographic affiliations and current affairs.”

Voting is limited to 20 per payment method and Green said “there is no current evidence that it disproportionally effects the final result”.

However, he said the “the question has been asked and so we will look at it”.

Related Reads

Actor Stephen Rea joins pro-Palestine demonstration calling for Irish boycott of Eurovision

Bakhurst says RTÉ won't pull Irish entry out of Eurovision despite protests against Israel

Green also said he “wants to make sure any ancillary conversations do not overshadow this epic achievement” by the winner JJ of Austria.

He said the voting system “includes multiple security layers” and that all results are verified through the contests voting partner, Once Germany,

Green said Once “collectively have over 40 years of voting experience” and added that “independent compliance monitor EY oversees and authenticates the results”.

He added that the Reference Group for the Eurovision studies the voting data after each contest to “ensure our rules and systems remain fail safe and take into account contemporary external factors such as advances in technology and external influences”.

Need more information on what is happening in Israel and Palestine? Check out our FactCheck Knowledge Bank for essential reads and guides to navigating the news online.