Six countries implicated as Eurovision cheating scandal is uncovered

A Eurovision scandal has been revealed as organisers admit that they found “irregular voting patterns” from six countries and subsequently removed their scores.

Eurovision is an international songwriting competition that’s judged by both the public and a panel of judges from varying countries. In the past, the competition was judged solely by judges – but faced public backlash after it was thought that certain countries arranged a “pact” to vote for each other and rig the system.

The grand final of the event took place last night in Italy, and Ukraine took out the top spot after an overwhelming public vote. However, European Broadcasting Union (EBU) publicly announced that they noticed “unusual voting patterns” from the jury’s votes from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino.

As a result, these votes were removed and replaced with “aggregated results” – which were calculated based on the results of other countries with similar voting records

“In the analysis of jury voting by the European Broadcasting Union’s pan-European voting partner after the Second Dress Rehearsal of the Second Semi-Final of the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, certain irregular voting patterns were identified in the results of six countries,” a statement from the union read.

“The EBU takes any suspected attempts to manipulate the voting at the Eurovision Song Contest extremely seriously and has the right to remove such votes in accordance with the official voting instructions, irrespective of whether or not such votes are likely to influence the results and/or outcome of the voting.”

Australia was represented by former The Voice contestant Sheldon Riley in the 2022 Eurovision competition. He was awarded a respectable 123 votes from the jury, however, he received just 2 points from the public vote, which is the nation’s worst result ever.