"Ordered to lose": France and Eurovision

La Zarra performing Evidemment in Liverpool. Source: eurovision.tv

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest takes place in Liverpool on Saturday 13 May. France is hoping to win with the song Evidemment by Canadian artist La Zarra.

Eurovision doesn’t tend to generate a lot of excitement in France, at least compared to some other countries in Europe. Perhaps one reason is that France has not won the competition since 1977 when Marie Myriam triumphed with l’oiseau et l’enfant.

Could the reason be that France hasn’t wanted to win? According to Yves Bigot, a former boss at the public broadcaster, France 2, he was “ordered to lose” while at both the French public broadcaster and its Belgian equivalent, RTBF.

The reason? Cost. The winner of the show each year is responsible for staging the competition the following year, which can run into many millions of euros.

Bigot said in a TV interview that putting on the annual show can cost up to €25 million and the TV channels just don’t have the money. He said that when Belgium won the competition some years before he arrived, around 2,000 people lost their jobs just to cover the cost of putting on the show. He added that the situation was different in smaller countries, where the costs are covered by the government.

"Le problème, c'est que si vous gagnez, c'est vous qui organisez l'année d'après, ça fait 20 à 25 millions d'euros. Donc les chaînes n'ont pas cet argent. Sauf dans les petits pays, où alors là c'est l'office du tourisme ou le ministère du Tourisme, qui finance"

According to Le Figaro, €25 million might even be an underestimate in some cases. When Azerbaijan staged the contest in 2012, it spent €60 million. In 2019, the Israeli broadcaster KAN had to take out a fifteen-year loan to finance the €28 million it needed to put on the show that year.

The head of the French delegation to this year’s Eurovision said things are very different now. Alexandra Redde-Amiel told BFMTV that the intention now is definitely to win.

So good luck to France and La Zarra.