Tie Break part 2 – Vi har ett resultat

Ebu

You remember back in late May when I was doing my review, I got concerned about a tie between Netherlands and Malta, and wrote a lengthy piece about how I thought that something looked a touch untoward with regards to how the tie had been broken.

Well after I contacted the EBU (and they passed the buck to telcoms partner Digame), we have an answer.

In the case of a tie, they work out a combined result. We all knew that, but what we didn’t know was how they worked it out.

It turns out that Digame go old school – the country with the most nations noting for it gets the higher place. This, by a very wide margin, was the Netherlands, and therefore they were placed above Malta.

So that’s all settled then. Netherlands 11th, Malta 12th.

Personally, I believe the rules could do with a bit of clarification. To the best of my knowledge, they’re unclear (as I pointed out in my last piece). Someone just needs to look at the tiebreak rules and write something like:

“In the event of a tie for any position, a combined rank will be obtained by allocating 12 points to the song that has scored highest from the jury, 10 points to the second highest, 8 points for the third highest down to 1 point for the 10th highest score. This procedure will be repeated with the televote and the scores combined to produce a ranking list per country.

The song that has obtained points from the most number of countries will be deemed the winner. ”

It’d save me doing loads of work that wasn’t needed on a Saturday afternoon!!!