The annual Eurovision post

Well, actually there are usually several annual Eurovision posts - this is the first year since starting the blog in 2008 that I haven't posted predictions for the two semi-finals.  But don't worry, I wasn't boycotting Israel or anything like that, so there's no need for Fiona Robertson to launch a bigotry inquiry.  I just ran out of time.

I know some of you get mildly homicidal when I start writing about Eurovision, so to sweeten the pill this year I thought I might make a small departure from my usual prediction post, and instead offer you some betting tips.  Even if you're not interested in Eurovision itself, you might be interested in making a little money out of it.  Obviously what you do with this advice is entirely at your own risk - it's just some general speculation about where the value might possibly lie.

The Netherlands, oddly enough, are the red-hot favourites to win this year, and if they do, it'll be their first triumph since the quintessentially dreadful Ding-A-Dong way back in 1975 (a song that Edwyn Collins memorably turned into a Bond theme two decades later).  Over the last few years, strong favourites have tended to win at a canter, but if you go further back, the contest is littered with highly-fancied entries that crashed and burned.  The most recent example was 2011, when France were expected to win but finished a poor fifteenth, which allowed Azerbaijan to emerge from the pack.  In this case I'm fairly confident the Netherlands will finish close to the top of the leaderboard, because the song is likely to be the favourite of the juries.  But whether it wins outright will also depend on the public vote, and that's where one or two doubts creep in.  It's actually possible to bet on the outcome of the public vote alone, and I'd suggest that the eye-catching Australian entry and Russia are both quite generously priced on that front.  Russia are particularly tempting, partly because they're the kings of political voting, and partly because their singer Sergey Lazarev won the televote (but not the jury vote) three years ago.  And at the risk of fuelling David Leask's suspicions, it's not a bad song at all.

When I first heard the UK's song in February, I thought it was "our" best entry for years and years and years, and I still think that, but it clearly hasn't caught the imagination of the fans, and you can get odds of close to 500/1 against a UK win.  In spite of uninspiring staging, I believe the song is significantly underpriced, probably due to fatalism brought about by years of poor UK results.  Probably the most sensible bet would be the 25/1 on offer for the UK to merely finish in the top ten, which seems insanely generous.  (For the avoidance of doubt, I don't think the UK will make the top ten, but I do think there's a greater than 4% chance of that happening.  4% is the percentage chance implied by the odds.)

The catchy-but-appalling San Marino song is also a rank outsider to make the top ten, and that's a semi-tempting one because you can guarantee the public will be voting for it as a laugh.  But you'd assume it'll be hammered by the juries.  (There again, the juries ranked the Israeli novelty song as high as third last year, so anything is possible.)

There are a few other entries that are odds-against to make the top ten, but which might be a value bet - the Czech Republic song is very infectious, Serbia have followed the dramatic Balkan ballad template that proved so successful for them a few years back, and Cyprus have a song that is fairly similar to their runner-up from last year.

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And for those of you who aren't interested in either Eurovision or Eurovision betting, here is YouGov's latest Scottish subsample for the European elections.  It's an unusually large subsample of more than 600 respondents, which makes it almost as good as a full-scale poll, because YouGov (unlike other firms) are believed to weight their Scottish subsamples correctly.

SNP 39%, Brexit Party 20%, Liberal Democrats 13%, Greens 10%, Conservatives 7%, Labour 6%, UKIP 2%, Change UK 1%

Seats projection: SNP 3, Brexit Party 1 or 2, Liberal Democrats 1, Greens 0 or 1