There have been two tie situations at the Eurovision Song Contest.
Since the four-way tie result at the Eurovision Song Contest 1969, there have been several rule changes over the years to handle potential ties. The only other occurrence of a tie result for first place was in 1991 between Sweden and France where Sweden won on a count-back.
Tiebreaker rule evolution[]
Method | Summary |
---|---|
Re-vote | The songs involved in the tie would be performed one more time and would be re-voted on by the other participating countries. This was introduced in 1970 and ran until 1988. However, this rule never had to be used. |
Count-back | In the event of a tie for first place, the country that received the most 12-point scores would be the winner. If still tied, the 10-point scores would be taken into account and so on all the way down to the 1-point scores. If still tied, both countries would initially be declared joint winners; after the 1991 tie, the rules were changed so that the song that performed earlier in the running order would be declared the winner. This change was introduced in 1989. |
Current Rules | In the event of a tie for first place, the winner would be the song that received points from the greater number of nations (if the current tiebreaker rules were used in 1991, France would have won due to 18 nations voting for it compared to 17 for Sweden). If still tied, the count-back procedure would come into effect. If still tied after that, then the song that performed earliest in the running order would take precedence. If two songs are tied for first place and the song performed earlier in the running order is from the host country, the song performed later in the running order is declared the winner. Since 2008, this current rule applies to ties for all places in both the semifinals and the final. |
50/50 Combination[]
- As of 2016, if there is a tie between two or more songs when the combined calculation between televotes and National Jury votes is used to determine the final ranking of the songs in the Semi-Finals or in the Final, the song(s) which obtained the most votes from the televotes shall be ranked highest.
- Should two or more songs receive exactly the same number of televotes in a given country, the results of the National Jury shall be used to determine their respective ranks (i.e. the song having obtained the best rank from the National Jury shall be ranked highest).
- Should two or more songs receive exactly the same rank from a National Jury, the order shall be ascertained by a show of hands by the members of the National Jury. If there is still a tie, the final order shall be decided by the vote of the youngest member of the National Jury.
References[]
- ↑ http://www.eurovision.tv/upload/press-downloads/2016/2015-10-28_2016_ESC_rules_PUBLIC_EN.pdf 1.4) Procedure in case of a tie in the Semi-Finals or in the Final