I happen to live in Albania for work from sometime now and let me tell you that the winner of the National Song Festival here won the title in an unorthodox way(I cannot say more but all the capital talks of her having an affair with some high profile member organizer of the event) and based on this let me say she is not going to win anything in Eurovision and she will be eliminated in the first night.I agree with what people are talking here as all are sharing the same idea.

Yes, this is still the information from the 2020 thread and I left it there, since technically it's correct imo. Officially there was no contest in 2020, so they give their comeback after having missed one edition (the 2019 one). But this is splitting hairs and probably not that important in the end Just a side note^^

Good to see you around in this thread @LTU_btc. Pretty bad luck for The Roop. It's not easy to produce a winning song for the ESC, especially not for a small country like Lithuania with few diaspora. Keeping my fingers crossed for them to be kissed by the muse this year as well

Yeah, it will be difficult to make another good song. Though, in recent years I noticed that quality of music increase in my country, there is enough groups or singers who easy get millions of views on Youtube, but most of them aren't interested to participate in ESC. Also, not everything fits to Eurovision.
When I will have time, I want to compare list of already confirmed participants and odds for last year Eurovision. I wouldn't be surprised if some countries which weren't ranked well by bookmakers decided not to send same participants in 2021 .

Well, if event will be held without spectators, I don't think there will be big difference between live performance and pre-recorded song. After all, it won't be shown through Zoom or similar platform - pre-recorded songs will be filmed on TV studio of their own country, so I doubt that there will be such big difference from live performance.

I am not aware that Betfair is hosting this kind of games, by the way aside from Betfair do you know other platforms that host this kind of games just in case
we want to bet for the winners of this Eurovision song contest.

I will just hope that the seeded to win will still get a good odds so we can try our luck by staking our bet to those five participants if it is possible to bet to
more than 1 participant to win the contest.

The ESC is normally covered by "all" bookmakers, at least the winners market. In most bookies you will find Top3, Top10, H2H and other side markets additionally. Even Betfair will have these markets at a later point.


Being seeded for the final doesn't say anything about your chances to win the ESC. It's just that you, as one of the big payers, don't have to through the semi-final qualification round. In fact the Big5 do very bad generally in ESC (because people don't necessarily like to see the big countries win). The last win from one of these countries was Germany in 2010, followed by UK in 1997. France last won in 1977, Italy in 1990 (they took a long break in the 90's and 00's) and Spain in 1969.

---

@Saint-loup
Thanks, and welcome to the 2021 thread, I was hoping you would show up here

France and Israel have made their selections:

Barbara Pravi - Voilà
Eden Alene - Set Me Free

The french entry is totally not mine, but maybe some people will like it. As we know non-english songs generally have a bit harder time, but at least "Voilá" is a word that everyone knows
Israel is a more modern pop song and kind of catchy, but in the end the typical ESC trash. Odds above 300 don't suggest this entry being able to make any noise, but you never know

If anyone finds the songs/videos of Greece/Cyprus, please post, but I don't think they have been published yet.

---

@LTU_btc

Is this the song from The Roop for this year ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWqrdzNoBKA

Eurovision is a popular contest in my country, so I tend to follow the top nominees and winners. It's not a secret that even though the contest is meant to apolitical, it's actually very political (and honestly, I don't think it's such a bad thing because they tend to support important things). So my preliminary guess is that Belarus will make it to the final round and is likely to win the contest if they take part in it (and if those taking part are not Lukashenko supporters) because of all the things that happened in Belarus in 2020. But of course, it's too early to say for now, and I'll be following the updates to see where this is going.

Ukraine announced their song, so perhaps the table should be updated. The song is called "Noise" ("Shum"). Here's a link to the song. And here's a link to the proof that this is the song from Ukraine. The song is very bizarre, but people seem to like it, and it combines both folk music and the visual part which reminds of the COVID-19 pandemic which might be beneficial.
Belarus might not participate this year due to political issues, but I still think they could easily win if they did and managed to make a song that is vaguely against the current regime. You're saying it's not allowed to bring political messages, and of course they cannot be mentioned explicitly. However, a political message matters a lot in the end. I remember well how in 2016 Ukraine won the Eurovision with a song about the deportation of Crimean Tatars that happened back in 1944. Even though the song was about the past, it was clearly associated with the fresh memories of Russia annexing Crimea and Tatars facing discrimination there once again.
Apart from this example, Netta won in 2018 with a clear feminist message of her song, and a few years before, Conchita Wurst won which raised awareness on homosexuality and openly being oneself.
Some years are just about nice melodies which are often about love or something like that, but other years have clear political winners. 2020 was a very tough year, so I think the song that wins is going to be about some political aspect. But of course, we'll know more closer to the date.

Croatian broadcaster HRT has chosen its entry into Eurovision 2021 with the unique show of its national selection, 'Dora'.
After all the votes of the jury and the public were counted, Albina won first place with the song "Tick-Tock" and she will represent Croatia at the ESC 2021 in Rotterdam.

Albina – Tick-Tock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX9fBSTjUfk


EDIT: I've updated the post with the link to the official video.

Thanks, added her to the list. The song is really crap imo and even the performance was nothing special (to not say boring); sometimes you wonder how crappy the other entries in the national selections must have been The odds for Croatia have gone up accordingly.

North Macedonia and Moldova have revealed the name of their songs now, but I wasn't successful in actually finding them on Youtube, so I guess just the name was released. Which leads me to the question, where the point is in just releasing the name of a song. These artists are not some superstars, where the world is waiting impatiently for just the name of their song

---

Some bookies now have odds and it feels like these are influenced a lot by last years odds with some artists coming back after 2020 edition was cancelled:


Source: https://sports.ladbrokes.com/event/tv-specials/international/eurovision-song-contest/2021-eurovision-song-contest/232206849/all-markets

Here you can find a screenshot of the odds in March last year. France is new among the favourites for now, the rest is more or less the same.

At this point you can really find super valuable odds, if you follow the national selections a bit, which is not always easy to do. But you can also be dead wrong, thats the risky part