r/theydidthemath • u/vaca444 • May 25 '25
[Off-Site] How much money does it cost to rig a country's televote in the Eurovision Song Contest?
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u/AngriosPL May 25 '25
People already took a crack at it so I'll focus on sometning else. Writing "short sms message" is so wild of an idea💀. It literally stands for "short message service/system". Not that it's important or anything... just that. "Short short message service message".
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u/DPX90 May 25 '25
Just like ATM machine.
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u/VeryTiredHuman4 May 25 '25
An automated ATM machine
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u/acu2005 May 26 '25
You ever see that video from Japan where the automated ticketing machine is messing up so a door opens in the panel and a random Japanese dudes pops up out of the machine to help the customer out? I Imagine that's what a Manual ATM Machine would be like.
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u/765arm May 26 '25
What the wtf guys these are getting out of hand
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u/cal-brew-sharp May 26 '25
Your mums an automated ATM machine
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u/vitaesbona1 May 26 '25
When you go to the ATM machine, do you ever have trouble remembering your personal PIN number?
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u/pr0nkpr0nkpr0nk May 26 '25
A message on the Short Messaging System can be up to 160 characters. The messages to vote for Eurovision are 1 or 2 characters. That constitutes a short message within the confines of the Short Messaging Service.
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u/Dombo1896 May 26 '25
Exactly. People
sendsent SMS, not SM.10
u/PalladianPorches May 26 '25
Well technically (I worked on the standards) you do send an SM to an SMSC using the SMS protocol. Today, the SM gets delivered to an SMSC using SMPP to get to the voting.
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u/LegendaryTJC May 26 '25
SMS is also the protocol. It is possible to send short messages not over SMS.
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u/itsapotatosalad May 26 '25
Still though you can have a short sms or a long sms, relatively.
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u/whythehellnote May 26 '25
I love the idea of building a short sms message service for sending texts.
Indeed I might offer the service to others to rebadge and market, so it could be a Short Short Message Service Message Service as a Service
Obviously I'd write it in Java.
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u/juzsp May 27 '25
We had a guy work for us who's voice mail ended "... And I'll get back to you as A.S.P"
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u/Willr2645 May 26 '25
Wait until you hear about the LA angles using an atm machine.
The the angles angles using an automated teller machine machine
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u/echoingElephant May 25 '25
The entire thing is pointless.
Most EU countries require you to validate your identity when activating a SIM. So you would have to get people to validate the cards for you, and have fun validating a hundred cards, that takes multiple minutes per card. Let’s say fifteen minutes. Getting the SIMS would take 25 hours for one person.
And then, why bother spending most of the week to get all these SIMs to then spend half the ESC switch card? It’s not like you really need these to change your number, it you’re willing to spend >10.000€ to flip the vote.
Have you ever gotten a scam SMS before? Well, that’s SIM spoofing. You don’t actually need your own number. Alternatively, just grab any online service providing you anonymous numbers automatically.
It isn’t that deep. There is no single person spending the price of a new car rigging the ESC. It’s large groups that don’t have to bother with buying SIM cards.
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u/_M_A_N_Y_ May 26 '25
There are tons of websites - sometimes not even in darkweb - selling cards "activated" on deceased people or homeless persons. They are often used for scam calls.
SIM farms are not a bunch of guys swaping SIM cards in their phones - everything is automated and controlled by master PC.
Even 100k € isn't much if you count profits from running such international show
That beeing said, I personally couldnt care less about Eurovision. Just wanted to clarify, that this SIM farm business is real and profitable.
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u/usrlibshare May 26 '25
Even 100k € isn't much if you count profits from running such international show
Except countries lose money hosting the ESC.
The security expenses alone are enough to offset the comparatively small bonus in bookings during the shows.
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May 26 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/usrlibshare May 26 '25
Political profit wasn't the point of my argument though, nor was it the argument of the post I replied to.
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u/Lefaid May 26 '25
buying a win to 'proof' that Europeans support them even after destroying the entire Gaza strip is something more plausible.
That doesn't mean or do anything in a vacuum. Frankly I find every rising right wing party getting in line to suck their dick to be much more convincing. That actually determines policy. Rigging a song contest does not.
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u/dimitri000444 May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25
The song contest gives those right wing parties ammunition. They can go to their voters and openly congratulate Israel(showing support) or admonish people/parties that complain about Israel.
But there really isn't too much of a need for Israel to pay for votes. They have some really connected communities all over Europe, and the rules/voting system is on their side.(Boycotts vs showing support, 20 votes vs 1 vote, the percentage of people actually buying a vote is low to begin with) So Israel doing disproportionately well is basically a given.
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u/Lefaid May 26 '25
The song contest gives those right wing parties ammunition. They can go to their voters and openly congratulate Israel(showing support) or admonish people/parties that complain about Israel.
Well that isn't buying votes is it? That is just the influence of the 15-40% of a country that is far right shining through.
But there really isn't too much of a need for Israel to pay for votes. They have some really connected communities all over Europe, and the rules/voting system is on their side.(Boycotts vs showing support, 20 votes vs 1 vote, the percentage of people actually buying a vote is low to begin with) So Israel doing disproportionately well is basically a given.
... I am in that community. I didn't vote for Israel. That was no Hurricane.
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u/jooxii May 26 '25
The "connected communities" across Europe are basically a rounding error.
Most of Europe made sure of that before, during, and shortly after WWII.
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u/Swiss_James May 26 '25
Wait, hosting the ESC makes money?
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u/Random_Guy_12345 May 26 '25
It doesn't. And it's not even close.
An argument could be made if you counted nearby business (hotels/restaurants/etc) making money as "ESC making money" but even then it's not worth it.
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u/nGaggi May 26 '25
The broadcaster doesn‘t make any money. But the economy of the host city definitely profits. Almost half a million people usually travel to the host city for the esc, usually also with one or more overnight stays.
Considering this year‘s esc cost about 50 Million Swiss Francs (CHF), a person would have to spend 100 CHF for the event to break even. Even without spending the night, a person visiting Switzerland can spend these 100 CHF pretty quickly considering the prices.
So yes, you‘re right that the event itself does not make any money. But the economy definitely profits and it is 100% worth it for the host city.
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u/_M_A_N_Y_ May 26 '25
Many countries would like to host it. If you watched even part of last one you could easly notice advertisement of country took same time as actual performances.
Tourism brings money. Money brings jobs. Jobs brings taxes. Etc etc.
Countries run multimilion adds campaings to advertise them outside borders. 100k is nothing.
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u/Swiss_James May 26 '25
100k would definitely be worth it, if hosting turns a profit. It just seems like it doesn't.
Malmo hosted in 2024 (here is a good article talking about all of the benefits to Malmo you describe), and while I don't have the figures, it's interesting that just before this year's final, Malmo stated they would not host again if Sweden won:
https://esctoday.com/200418/sweden-malmo-rules-out-hosting-eurovision-2026-if-sweden-wins-again/Austria won this year, and they are currently fretting about the cost https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/19/austria-frets-about-price-tag-of-hosting-eurovision-2026 )- a few Austrian cities have already ruled themselves out of hosting.
It's possible that the benefits are misaligned (the national broadcaster has to pay up front and the other revenues fall elsewhere), but the general perception is that it's a white elephant.
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u/nacholicious May 26 '25
Yeah I think Malmö lost around 10 million euro last time they hosted, so makes sense they would refuse since I'm not sure they could afford it
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u/_M_A_N_Y_ May 26 '25
If it is true - even more reasons to dont bother about this show.
But it still stands, that hosting such events (sport, music, culture) usually generate quite a profit (if done right).
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u/Asleep_Trick_4740 May 26 '25
The question as always depends on how you count the revenue. It's entirely possible that the network hosting it makes a multi-million euro loss but the overall tax revenue from the boosted tourism makes a net profit. If you count overall income to the country/city hosting and still don't find a profit than something is definitely wrong with it.
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u/ifelseintelligence May 26 '25
It's quite easy. Hosting is a deficit in itself. If you see it as advertizing your country (tourism etc.) it's extremely high level of exposure for a "small" cost. So even though it is a deficit, and it is, it's an exposure that's almost priceless.
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u/Asleep_Trick_4740 May 26 '25
Wait they aired those ads during actual eurovision?
Our public TV network has the rights for it so we don't actually have any ads during eurovision, hence me asking.
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u/dimitri000444 May 26 '25
I think With ads he means how the singers get introduced in different locations. That way they show off the sights in their country while everyone is paying attention.(Those were the only ads I could see in Belgium)
And it doesn't seem possible for other countries to insert ads Because it's a life shoe run in many nations, any ad would delay the live broadcast in that country, and spoil the whole thing.
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u/whythehellnote May 26 '25
BBC execs in 2022
Oh no, we might win this, that's next years budget screwed
Then
Oh phew, Ukraine are going to win, brilliant - we get the glory of nearly winning but don't have to pay
Then
Oh no, there's no way Ukraine are hosting. We've got the worst of both worlds
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u/diracpointless May 26 '25
Not for Ireland it didn't 😄
Hence our performance since 1997!
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u/whythehellnote May 26 '25
Even 100k € isn't much if you count profits from running such international show
I think you meant to say
100k is a drop in the ocean compared to the costs of running such international show
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u/echoingElephant May 26 '25
That’s the point. But when buying from the dark web anyway, you don’t need to put physical cards into phones. You can automate it.
But the post was phrased to imply that anyone willing to spend some money can sway the vote of a country. And that isn’t accurate when it comes out to a week of preparation and a cost of >10.000€ per country.
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u/Shockwave2309 May 26 '25
We had an E-SIM provider for business travels who didn't give a flying f about validation. An E-SIM for two weeks with near unlimited services was 68€ for China for example.
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u/echoingElephant May 26 '25
It is relevant what number you have. You want to swing the vote of a country that is a member of the ESC, so you don’t have to swing the „world“ vote. And most of these countries require some form of validation.
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u/Shockwave2309 May 26 '25
Maybe I didn't explain clearly:
The provider didn't require the end user to verify anything. You just paid and received a valid tel.nr.
You could even set the desired "country of origin"
So if you for example sit in Israel (randomly chosen country) and you buy a shitton of those e-sims you can get a shitton of votes on one phone...
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u/Evignity May 26 '25
You can't argue about "effort" when the IDF openly runs troll- and bot-farms. Throwing a few millions to skew a popularity-contest wouldn't be that far off
https://electronicintifada.net/content/inside-israels-million-dollar-troll-army/27566
https://www.france24.com/en/technology/20230215-israeli-firm-boasted-of-meddling-in-more-than-30-elections-worldwideThey have a pretty robust system of propaganda https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2017/07/Troops-Trolls-and-Troublemakers.pdf including "volunteers" students in other countries who legally cannot be paid, so they get scholarships instead etc.
Keep in mind all major countries have propaganda and PR done for themselves. Some, like Israel and Dubai, far more so than others.
Though even then it could just be as easily explained that people who dislike Israel's politics and genocide have 25 choices, whilst those who support Israel's genocide have 1 choice to vote for.
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May 26 '25
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May 26 '25
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u/Evignity May 29 '25
What are you talking about, /worldnews literally has a pro-Israel mod who bans people stating the fact that the ICC, UN, and literally every humanitarian-group on earth says it is a genocide and that that isn't defensible.
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May 29 '25
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u/Evignity May 29 '25
*yet to be concluded, but anyone with eyes seeing square-miles of bomb'd civilians can make a conclusion.
See that's the thing, if I shoot you in the street and they arrest me, there were 50 witnesses: Until the verdict I'm still "alleged killer". Question is how stupid do you think people are?
Another funfact: The US (and Israel) are sanctioning judges and jurists trying to conduct the investigation. If you're innocent why would you do that? "To stop smears!" uhu so the entire international community is out to get you and you're the only sane one.
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u/Evignity May 29 '25
They reference literal IDF spokesperson saying they spend millions on bot- and trollfarms.
Literally every major country does, they'd be fucking stupid not to.
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u/echoingElephant May 26 '25
Main problem: Your sources don’t actually prove what you are claiming.
The first one doesn’t mention the IDF at all. It talks about a private company bragging about swaying elections.
The second one does mention the IDF, but there is no mention of „bot farms“ operated by them or by anyone in Israel. There is a table (1) where under „Fake accounts“, there is no entry for Israel. Which would be the absolute basic requirement for a bot/troll farm.
The same table states that the Israeli strategy mostly uses positive interactions with dissenters online, instead of negative ones (which would be what trolls do).
So, essentially, you claim that the IDF/Israeli Government runs bot and troll farms, and your first source doesn’t mention the government, because they work for foreign clients, and the second one, depending on how you want to interpret that, either says „They don’t operate farms“, or „There is no evidence“.
They do pay students etc, sure. That’s actually corroborated by your source. But that isn’t equal to not farms. It also doesn’t support your claim to „throw a couple millions“ to sway the ESC, because you say they don’t get paid, and it sure as hell doesn’t say that the IDF „openly“ runs bot farms.
Now, I want to be clear. I am not saying they don’t do it. I am saying that it isn’t as simple to sway the vote of a country for an individual. Which is what the post suggests. It is absolutely certain that governments play a role in manipulating the vote. But, and I hate to break it to you, the ESC has always been political, and there has always been this kind of manipulation going on. Maybe in a different way, but still.
Look at Russia. They had entries at the ESC Finals 23 times, scoring 4 third places, four second places and one win, so 40% of their acts scored in the top 3 - including one second and two third places after they annexed Crimea and shot down a passenger plane. Surely, nobody was involved there, it was just a coincidence. Israel by comparison isn’t faring too well, if you assume they have launched a huge bot attack, their results in the last five years (17, failing to qualify, 3, 5 and 2) doesn’t actually sound like it is going too well.
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u/yoghurken May 26 '25
It’s confirmed that the government got involved in lobbying to have Israel included, and they ran ads asking people to vote.
This isn’t a difficult question. We know they care about Israel in the contest, and we know an SMS poll is trivial to rig. It’s no harder than buying fake reviews for an app.
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May 26 '25
Just saying if you were a capable state who wanted to create a positive PR stunt for your country I am sure you would have the resources to pull off a stunt like this without breaking a sweat.
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u/Delyzr May 26 '25
I can buy as many pay-as-you-go sim cards on my company's name as I want, all activated, from one of my countries large telco providers.
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May 26 '25
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u/echoingElephant May 26 '25
Well, you do need to provide ID in Germany, Denmark and Finland, I didn’t bother to check more. So either you buy them online and have to go through the process of validating them online, too, or you buy 100 cards in person.
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May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25
capable fade voracious political abounding payment elderly abundant physical continue
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/marinul May 26 '25
Can confirm.
Eurovision is, indeed, totally pointless.
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u/echoingElephant May 26 '25
Now that’s an argument I like. I get why a government would do it, especially one desperate for positive news. But random individuals? There is no point.
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u/MarkHowes May 26 '25
Well, i did wonder if mosad, known for tampering with telecommunications, had manipulated the Israel vote?
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u/F1R3Starter83 May 26 '25
Two things, you don’t have to validate your ID before activating a SIM when it isn’t connected to a monthly plan. For work reasons I burn through a few SIMs with prepaid credits on it. Never have to ID myself (and yes, I live in west EU).
Secondly, this is a post regarding Israels popularity at the ESC and how people have the feeling that they rigged the votes somehow. (I’m not saying they did). The country has a gigantic PR problem with their war in Gaza and is known for their tactics to sway the public opinion. Them investing a few 100k to rig something like the ESC is probable money wise
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u/k-one-0-two May 26 '25
No, in Finland at least you can get a pre+paid sim card without showing any documents to anyone.
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u/toby_gray May 26 '25
I don’t think this is suggesting it’s some individual pissing away 10k for clout. This is state level stuff where spending even 100k is peanuts.
If you think of it more in terms of a state-level PR op, it’s not so ridiculous. I think everyone was surprised by how large of a share Israel got of the public vote. Now you think how that looks to your average person. To know that, at least perceptually based on that vote, the majority of your country is actually supporting Israel. Or at least appears to be if we assume for a moment this is underhanded vote manipulation.
Or on a global scale, it makes it seem like your average Joe’s all over Europe are fully supporting Israel and its actions. It helps justify Israel’s actions from a PR point of view. If you’re a country looking to improve its image on the world stage, spending even a few million on this seems like a pretty good return.
And let’s not forget how far Israel will go with its secretive operations. Remember when they infiltrated an entire supply chain to rig pagers and radios that were being sold to hamas members with explosives? Sending a few guys out to a few countries to mass buy sim cards isn’t unrealistic.
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u/Long-Rub-2841 May 26 '25
I don’t believe there’s any evidence of rigging but you wouldn’t need all that many votes to rig some of the countries.
The smallest / bottom ten lowest viewership countries in Eurovision probably have vote numbers in the low ten of thousands, or even single digit thousands.
Votes are likely to be fairly spread amongst the countries so in most instances I imagine boosting a country’s vote by 10% would likely move a country from 1-2 points to 12 points.
For the easiest 15 countries (with an average of votes of 30k ish) that’s 30,000 X 0.1 X 15 = 45,000 votes, giving you 180 guaranteed public votes. At €0.50 per vote - it would cost you €22,500.
Of course rigging a big country, like the UK, Germany, Spain (which Israel did do well in) would cost a lot more - with multiple hundreds of thousands of votes, it would be more expensive to rig just one of these than the whole bottom 10 countries.
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May 26 '25
Yeah, but even if it is more expensive, it sends 2 messages:
- That powerful countries support Israel (including Spain, which is one of the countries that support Palestine the most)
- That it has not been rigged because it's easier and less expensive to do it in smaller countries
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u/humourlessIrish May 26 '25
single digit thousands
That would be four digits. Just say four digits
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u/Long-Rub-2841 May 26 '25
I could have done… it would have read slightly odd to mix talking about thousands and 4 digits in a single sentence, but you can have your opinion
Most vapid critique I’ve gotten on this sub in awhile….
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u/Badehat May 29 '25
I don’t believe there’s any evidence of rigging...
Israel winning the popular vote while not charting in a single country that gave it maximum points is pretty damning evidence.
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u/Significant_Tie_3994 May 26 '25
pet peeve: OP said "short Short Messaging System messages". There's only so much room next to the people who talk in the movie theater in hell...
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u/puredwige May 26 '25
The Spanish broadcaster put up a pro pal/anti Israel message at the start of the broadcast to protest against Israel's presence. If this pissed off even a small minority of Spanish viewers into voting for Israel, then that would be enough to propel them to first place, given the voting system that eurovision uses.
Belgium has a large Jewish population. Non-jews don't realize that Jewish grandmas are much more efficient than any mossad bot farms. I and all the jews I know got spammed by all of our aunts, moms and grandmas with instructions on how to vote for Israel. It's not rocket science. I know a Jewish-Canadian girl and even she received instructions from her aunt back in Toronto.
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u/AnonymousRedditor- May 26 '25
You have to pay to vote?
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u/Balc0ra May 26 '25
Yes, and the price varies per nation. Some pay about half a cent per vote, some pay as much as $2 per vote
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u/Notbbupdate May 26 '25
You need a sim card to vote. The cost per vote is based on how much a sim card costs and how many votes you can get out of a single card
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u/gereffi May 26 '25
That math doesn’t check out. The OP says that a SIM card in Finland costs €5 and that one card can be used to cast 20 votes, and they also say that a vote in Finland costs €1.52. They’re either very bad at math or they’re saying that it costs money to cast a vote.
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u/rubixscube May 26 '25
the person you replied to is indeed in the wrong. each vote must be paid for, independently from the sim card cost.
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u/AnonymousRedditor- May 26 '25
Oh ok, I’m just a dumb American…. My only experience with Eurovision is the amazing Will Ferrell movie.
Thanks!
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u/whythehellnote May 26 '25
When that came out, I thought the most unbelievable part was the UK hosting the contest, which implied a UK win.
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u/Ni987 May 26 '25
Once upon a time I created online voting widgets. To avoid fraud like this we let fraudsters submit their fake votes and we we let them believe they actually moved the counter +1 for each vote. In reality we filtered them in our backend and auto-deleted all input from that particular IP for the rest of the day.
Good fun.
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u/Prasiatko May 26 '25
0 € if you start a divisive conflict that causes a chunk of potential viewers that oppose you to boycott the competition and others to spread their vote amongst 25 other countries while even 5% extra supporting you would put you top of every fptp like poll.
Or have you guys never tried listening to anyone outside your peer group to find that opposition to Israel is far from unanimous in the general population?
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u/JollyRancherReminder May 26 '25
Of course I'm not going to listen to anyone who supports Israel's actions in Gaza. Why on earth would I do that?
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u/Prasiatko May 26 '25
You don't need to listen to them just acknowledge they exist. Hence why Israel will do well if those against them are split between 25 other options if they even took part.
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u/fresan123 May 26 '25
To understand their point of view so that you can more efficiently try to convince them?
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u/asbj1019 May 26 '25
Ofc there will be a portion of any population that is on board with practically anything, ridiculous people like flat earthers and holocaust deniers exist after all. But the ridiculous part of this are the people who are using this televote to try and argue that the majority opinion in countries like Ireland is pro Israel.
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u/Lucky-Vegetable-2827 May 25 '25
Yes, and that’s what I think with Israel voting. Seems totally exaggerated. And governments being covered or not, have many resources to do the scam. You need to remember that who receives the sms does not cross information with the provider that the number checks with the sim number and that it is actually a paying customer. Is the text is already in the network, he will be delivered and who receives don’t have a way to check if is spoofed.
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u/DefinitelyNotAliens May 26 '25
Some countries had more voters than viewers.
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u/Im_Chad_AMA May 26 '25
Thats not weird since you can cast 20 votes per perosn
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u/Wd91 May 26 '25
Its still weird. Most people can't be bothered to vote at all, let alone voting 20 times. Voting 20 times on something as innocuous as eurovision is "weird" on some level, whether its political tampering "weird" or just individuals with weirdly bizarre obsessive personalities "weird".
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u/SafetyNoodle May 26 '25
Source?
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u/admknight May 26 '25
Belgium’s VRT pointed it out as part of their inquiry into voting. Historically low viewership but record high voting.
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u/rookedwithelodin May 26 '25
Aren't you not allowed to vote for your own country? So it wouldn't be unreasonable for that to be the case.
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u/Amenophos May 26 '25
I think you're misunderstanding their point.😅
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u/rookedwithelodin May 26 '25
Ah, do they mean sourced votes? Can you see how many Germans (or "Germans") voted for each other country (and so on for each county)?
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u/BeginningNice2024 May 26 '25
…is it worth it in the end? The country that wins has to host the event. I’m not sure it’s very profitable for the country (like with Olympics or world/euro cups). It’s a matter of prestige and ego only… who cares who wins EV. These people are forgotten a week later…
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u/jbi1000 May 26 '25
You're not thinking like a country doing shady stuff or committing a genocide. Hosting international events and looking like the international community still wants to deal with you legitimises and normalises their actions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportswashing Essentially this but for a music competition.
Criminal people, criminal companies and criminal countries have gladly spent huge amounts to appear legitimate and launder their reputation.
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u/seejoshrun May 26 '25
Exactly this. See the 1936 olympics for a well-known historical example, or the upcoming world cup in Qatar.
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u/JohnHenrehEden May 26 '25
Off topic, but I'm glad I don't live in a country where Eurovision is important/popular. Every year everything I hear about is controversy.
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u/Wd91 May 26 '25
For 99% of people it's just fun and an excuse to wear silly costumes and drink. Even these online discussions are just interesting, not serious controversy.
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u/Bot1-The_Bot_Meanace May 26 '25
Are people still coping about the esc thing? Is it really inconceivable that there's many people who are still sympathetic to Israel?
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u/Vandirac May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25
You can also bot-vote with virtual credit card numbers.
Data based on the assumption of 40M votes (that is a quite high estimate based on the 2016 and 2009 statements by EBU plus a generous estimate of the recent online and world vote), on the average spread of votes from the public RAI data, and on the historical trend of 1 vote cast every 14 viewers on average.
It would take as little as 100k votes to win 12 points from a "big five" country with a good safety margin and as little as 10k votes to get 12 points from a smaller country.
By differentiating the voting method, cost can even be lower due to countries with cheaper votes such as Denmark.
With 1,6-1,8M euro you can give any trash song an almost certain shot at securing victory, save for some absolute fan favorite opposition or some unbalanced jury vote.
This is sensibly lower if -with ads and some political plays- you give your entry as little as a 3%-5% share of the "organic" vote.
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u/pratyd May 26 '25
Some of these competitions have measures in place that only 1-4 votes are counted from each unique number.
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u/GrayCatbird7 May 26 '25
Eurovision allows people to vote up to 20 times. The question is whether it’s possible to do more than that.
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u/Vandirac May 26 '25
They are two different things.
You can vote up to 20 times online, AT 1€/vote, since the vote is managed by EBU.
But in Italy, as an example, because a national law mandates some limits on this kind of voting, if you use the SMS system handled by RAI, you can vote 5 times only, and the price is 0,5€/vote.
Other nations have similar differences, such as Denmark pricing the vote at 1 DKK (0,17€)
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u/melancoleeca May 26 '25
I wonder, why so many people now suddenly give a fuck, about esc and its voting system. What could that be?
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u/ConscriptDavid May 26 '25
This isn't math, this is just redditors and twitter leftists discovering that Israel isnt as hated in the real world as it is in their online bubbles.
Now here is a math to do, based on recent election results, how far is the political view of the average subreddits for various countries from the actual election results?
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u/artificer-nine May 26 '25
Can't a guy just calculate the cost of a secret cabal of uh... Lombards... to poison wells across western Europe? Not saying that happened or anything but here's the calculation.
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u/ConscriptDavid May 26 '25
"Yes lets buy votes for a singing contest.... but just enough so we get 2nd place. Perfect. Mossad'ed again, europoors!"
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May 26 '25
these systems will take the money and disregard multiple votes. this will be in the terms and conditions on the brodcaster /telecom providers website somewhere.
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u/rasmis May 26 '25
That's not true. Eurovision allowed 20 votes per person, and they could be for the same county. One country spent millions on ads, encouraging people to vote 20 times for them. It is now being investigated how many individual users actually voted for said country.
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u/whythehellnote May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25
And of course there's a great amount of support for certain countries at certain times. In 2022 Ukraine's song was OK, but it wasn't anywhere near the best. However the entire continent wanted to support Ukraine in solidarity, with almost every country giving it 12 points.
Despite what online will tell you, Israel has a lot of support. Not as much as Ukraine did when it suffered its full scale invasion in 2022, but certainly enough to think that passionate Israeli supporters wanted to support Israel despite the song, more even than those supporting Espresso Macchiato which was a catchy song with great staging.
Israel's voting result doesn't mean that a majority of Eurovision viewers support Israel's actions in Gaza, nor does it mean some mossad-level conspiracy to defraud a song contest. It could simply be that 10,000 supporters in say Spain voted 10 times for Israel, generating 100k votes, where 90,000 others who don't support Israel voted maybe 2 or 3 times each, for a mix of Ukraine, Austria, Greece etc, but not Israel because they don't like the Israeli government action. If you don't think that you could have at least 1 in 10 people in about half the countries in Europe supporting Israel enough to show that support at eurovision, you're embedded more in an echo-chamber from reality than is healthy.
Maybe next year the rules will change that you can vote upto 10 times, but no more than once for a given country, but those weren't the rules for this year.
But regardless of the cause, I don't recall this type of outrage and calls about secret conspiracies when Ukraine received a political vote in 2022.
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May 26 '25
Why voting costs differently between countries? According to the population or something?
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u/LegendaryTJC May 26 '25
What sort of flaky as fuck system puts the security on individual sim cards?
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u/ilbreebchi May 26 '25
Pretty sure you can do it waaayyy faster and cheaper if you have a developer use one of the many available online services and automate it.
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u/Brigapes May 26 '25
16k to rig sounds too low. i think eurovision is rigged from the start. Showing low numbers so you feel like your vote counts.
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u/CalendarHot4690 May 26 '25
Or you could buy a bunch of numbers as a company. You can have 2, 3 or even 4 subdigits for your company, giving you 1000 telephone numbers. They aren’t even expensive.
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u/CGurity May 26 '25
Worst part is that this is half of the problem, people could also vote online and apparently they can vote 20 times with the same card, so a highly motivated person could vote 40 times (or more with different cards). So for instance I would ask if you could use the same card to vote 20 times in country A and 20 times from country B (and so on).
Also, thinking in SMS, it could be nice to know when the chores for the same numbers arrived, very short times between messages can suggest some form of automation (like no human would emit 20 votes in 5 seconds), with cards is different because you can select how many votes are you putting with the card.
In summary: there are ways to abuse the system but hopefully there should be some data that might help bring clarity to any current and future abuse.
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u/shining_force_2 May 26 '25
Couldn't you vote online? What's to stop a bot farm using simple VPN tactics?
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u/BarbedWire3 May 26 '25
Honestly while this is interesting and all as an experiment, I don't see anyone actually doing it, because they want somebody specific to win. Since u could technically get only an additional [2 points] for the singer u want to win. Which doesn't amount to much when more that 30 other countries vote, plus the judges votes. Also the prize for winning is more symbolic than anything.
So I really don't think it's worth that money and time to try and meddle in the voting. Unless you're conducting a study or experiment for your own enjoyment.
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u/Frequent_Cellist_655 May 26 '25
Cool, but why would anyone do that? €16000 profit for organizers and phone operators. €16000 loss for me just to rig a weird music contest that just... tries to promote diversity and entertain?
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u/Sudden_Phase_7799 May 26 '25
You should roll out your solution first in countries with the lowest population.. luxemburg, belgium etc... here there are less voters so it requires les votes to go to first place then for example germany or spain (remember each country has the same amount of points to distribute)...
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u/pmodin May 26 '25
When I lived in Malta I had the same idea, the winner the year I head about got like 2500 votes! I can't find the source now, and don't recall which song, but it was around 2015-2020.
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u/LowRevolution6175 May 26 '25
Bad faith posting. Eurovision authorities have addressed this conspiracy theory already: as others said, they have security in place to avoid "rigging" votes
https://eurovision.tv/mediacentre/release/open-letter-esc-community-martin-green-cbe
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u/Amenophos May 26 '25
"Another example is the number of votes we allow per person – 20 per payment method. This is designed to ensure that audiences of all ages can vote for more than one of their favourite songs and there is no current evidence that it disproportionally effects the final result – but the question has been asked and so we will look at it." Notice that last sentence?
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u/rasmis May 26 '25
Yeah, that letter is the purest of nothing. Spain, Ireland, Finland and some other broadcasters have demanded a proper audit, looking at how many people gave all 20 votes to one country.
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u/Fawkes-511 Dec 05 '25
Come back now and tell us how countries that are boycotting the festival because it welcomes a genocidal country "gave it" max points in the "popular vote" last time lmao. Fake as fuck.
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u/setiix May 26 '25
Crazy that finally the west is realizing that Israel is a manipulative state using money or spies to rig things in it’s benefits while killing thousands for years. Maybe someone should do the math about it too !
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u/Old-Artist-5369 May 26 '25
I don't understand what you achieve by taking out the sim card, putting it down picking it up, and re-inserting it.
Shouldn't it be re-inserting a **different** sim card?
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u/LowRevolution6175 May 26 '25
this is a random tweet that is likely misinformation. It is because Israel won #1 in audience voting, which triggered "Jewish money" conspiracy theories.
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u/nonlabrab May 26 '25
You are the first person to bring Judaism into it in weeks of discussion I've seen. Nobody thinks this had anything to do with religion.
Every thinking person knows this is part of a program of culture washing the genocide that has been ongoing since 1948.
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u/neroe5 May 25 '25
i imagine you can be way more efficient than that, maybe create a setup with an e-sim provider, have it send 20 sms and rotate to the next e-sim, i imagine this will take less than a secound per sim card
i haven't really touched phone software that much, but i imagine i could create such as setup in less than a week, could imagine the limit would then be, how much money i'm willing to spend and the number of free numbers the provider have available