The Scoreboard is used in the Eurovision Song Contest to display all the votes from the various countries, and has changed in various styles and operations throughout the years.
Behind the older scoreboards, are operators who display the countries and numbers, and sometimes the scoreboard does go a little awry, with the wrong country's points being updated, a delay in updating, or the scoreboard changes color, such as the 1984 scoreboard. The first virtual scoreboard was used at the 1988 contest in Dublin. Jury spokespersons also gave their votes through the phone or have the Jury present in the hall, before there were satellites beginning in 1994 to transmit spokespersons from their own country and displayed on screen.
The 2003 contest presented the first reactive scoreboard. As points were allocated, the countries' placements on the board would change according the total number of points each had, making the results easier to follow.
In 1996 and 2014 there were holographic versions of the scoreboard on stage (2014's being in the big LED grid) which were also shown on the television in graphic format.
Nowadays, computers are used and are more accurate with more fancy graphics, but they don't create some of the funny moments that they've had in previous years. After 2005, the EBU decided to save some time when voting, instead of each point being read out individually, points 1-7 were already allocated and the spokesperson only has to read out points 8, 10 and 12. The voting still takes about an hour even with this method, due to the number of participating countries. Since 2010, there has been a program and system owned by the EBU that standardizes the scoreboard according to the visual identity of each edition. This system, however, was not used in the 2015 and 2023 editions in which the event sponsors were responsible for creating the visual identity.
The funniest moments in the Eurovision Voting
A video compiled by YouTube user escbelgium that includes the funny moments
But sometimes the voting spokesperson does mess up their votes, tries to draw things out for added suspense, or just wants to play funny.
In 2012, the Swedish spokesperson was the character "Lynda Woodruff" (aka Sarah Dawn Finer), who is known for various funny sketches throughout Eurovision shows. This caused some laughter.
A similar moment happened in 2021 when Icelandic spokesperson Hannes Óli Ágústsson (as his character Olaf Yohansson from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga) attempted to give the Icelandic jury's 12 points in the grand final to his favorite song "Ja Ja Ding Dong". The audience roared with delight, and it caused co-presenter Chantal Janzen to erupt in laughter.
Since 2016, with the the total split between the jury vote and the televote, the spokesperson only announces which country got 12 from their country's jury, with 1-8 and 10 points pre-allocated to the scoreboard.
Gallery[]
2010-2024[]
1995-2009 (Note that the scoreboards do not follow a visual standard and that each broadcaster generated its own graphics).[]
1980-1994[]
1957-1979[]
