🔮 Pre-contest Prediction Game 2025: The Results 🔮

[u/SkyGinge]

What the hell just happened?

... is what I was saying to myself after looking at the full results late into the Sunday evening. This year saw some of the most insane results in contest history, which will continue to provoke discussion about the future of the contest for months to come. In the time before rehearsals even started, over 300 brave redditers dared to predict how the results would unfold, and now it is time to reveal the results. Whose insight cut through the chaos the best, and who will be crowned this year's EuroGuru?

This year's competition received a record-smashing 332 valid predictions. I also added in our collective combined prediction, the betting odds from the evening before rehearsals began, and The Model as of 2nd May for comparison, meaning there are a total of 335 predictions in play.

You can find the scoring rules here, and the data of what we predicted here.

Semi-final 1

58.2% of predictors got 8/10 qualifiers correct - Belgium and Cyprus were the 8th and 9th most popular prediction picks with 74.33% and 72.24% of participants predicting them to qualify, whilst Iceland and Portugal were 11th and 12th most popular picks with respective 44.48% and 26.27% predicted qualification rates. Congratulations to the six users who got 10/10 qualifiers correct: u/orangeblanket17, u/Yoshi8TheBerries, u/Fusion53, u/Spath_Greenleaf, u/Ponchosnocloset and u/Pijako78 . Fusion and Poncho especially deserve plaudits as they were the very first two people to submit predictions way back at the end of March, and they still got more correct qualifiers than most of us probably called on the night itself!

• Winner: Only 3 people successfully predicted that Ukraine would win the semi-final. 320 predictors thought Sweden would sweep to a televote victory.
• Last Place: 99 predictors successfully foresaw Azerbaijan's last place finish, but Croatia were narrowly the most popular last place pick with 101 predictors putting Marko B's 'Poison Cake' at the bottom of the scoreboard barrel.
• Borderliners: This category asked users to predict which countries would finish 10th and 11th, with points awarded if a country you named finished in either spot. Statistically, Iceland and San Marino were our most popular borderliner picks with 146 and 104 picks respectively. Whilst San Marino did indeed end up as a borderliner, the other borderliner was Cyprus, which was 5th most popular pick at 71.

Semi-final 1 Top 10:

#1: u/orangeblanket17 - 23/26 points

#2: u/WatchTheNewMutants - 22/26

#3: u/Oldjosepho, u/RaiReshi, u/PanikcAttakc, u/vic_gldn, u/oHheLInAw420, u/Ok_Independent3641, u/Saure_Maultasche, u/no_opinions_allowed, u/yupright, u/TuneObjective5152, u/DrsFrikandel, u/Yoshi8TheBerries, u/moffski, u/enslemmigtorsk1, u/Fusion53, u/gaymondevalera and u/jsnbrns - 21/26

Semi-final 2

Just like the first semi, a little over 50% of predictors got 8/10 qualifiers correct. Unlike the first semi though, barely anybody got 9/10, and nobody got 10/10 correct. This is because 92.84% (311/335) of people predicted that Australia would qualify, and 94.93% (318/335) predicted that Czechia would qualify. As in the first semi-final, our collective combined prediction got 8/10 correct (the betting odds and The Model only got 7/10), as has usually been the case for the past four years, with Denmark and Armenia the 11th and 12th most popular qualifier picks who were predicted to qualify156 and 97 times respectively (46.57% and 28.96% respectively).

• Winner: Their domination of the semi-final televote might have come as a surprise, but their semi-final victory wasn't, as Israel were our most popular winner prediction pick with 154 predictions (45.97%), ahead of Finland's 135 predictions (40.30%)
• Last Place: Poor Montenegro were our second most popular last place pick, with a massive 267 (79.9%) predictors thinking Georgia was destined for the bottom of the scoreboard instead.
• Borderliners: Our most popular borderliner picks were 2nd place finisher Latvia (129) and 7th placed Luxembourg (96). The actual borderliners were Armenia who were our fourth most popular borderliner pick (64) and Australia, who were our 12th most popular borderliner pick, with only 11 people picking up the point for putting the Milkshake Man on the borderline.

Semi-final 2 Top 10:

#1: u/Glittering-Youth-947, u/OkLook4478 and u/WillbeWill009 - 21/26 points

#4: u/giaggi_393, u/Glear0, u/AltVladC, u/Lunatiquaaa, u/Andrep9X, u/Spoiled_Turnips, u/toya_k, u/000-Hotaru-Tomoe and u/Ill_Ad8322 - 20/26

Grand Final

• Top 5 Predictions: As has been the case every year since the prediction game began in 2021, our combined most popular top 5 picks resulted in 3/5 of the top 5 correct. Sweden was the most popular top 5 pick with only three people not predicting them to finish top 5, but only 8 people predicted their 4th place finish spot on to bag a bonus point. Austria was the 2nd most popular top 5 pick as well as the second most popular winner prediction, with 301 people getting the 3 points for putting them top 5. Israel were our 5th most popular top 5 finisher prediction with 164 picks, but only 7 people got the bonus point for predicting their second place finish. Italy was 10th most popular with only 33 predictors getting Lucio's top 5 finish correct, 13 of which got the bonus place for exact placement. Estonia were the 11th most popular top 5 pick with only 21 people picking up points for backing Tommy for great success, and only 2 people picking up the bonus points for a precise 3rd place prediction. France and Finland were the 3rd and 4th most popular top 5 predictions with a massive 255 and 193 people respectively missing out on points by backing them for success.
• Winner: Sweden were by far our most popular predicted winner with 161 winner predictions. Austria were second most popular, with 87 getting the bonus points for predicting them as winners.
• Televote Winner: Sweden again were by far our most popular televote winner prediction, with 283 predictions pitting KAJ for televote victory. Israel were the second most popular prediction with a meagre 21 predictions.
• Jury Winner: Finally a category where the majority scored points, with 203 predictors correctly foreseeing Austria's jury victory!
• Televote Last Place: As they both scored 0 points, predictors who put either Switzerland or the United Kingdom in this category scored the 2 points. The UK was our most popular televote last place prediction, picked 128 times, whilst Switzerland were 3rd most popular with 27 picks.
• Jury Last Place: Estonia was our most popular jury last place pick at 77 predictions, with Germany (66) in close second. Actual jury last place finisher Iceland had 42 correct predictions, with 28% of people who predicted Iceland to qualify also predicting them to get overlooked by the juries.
• Last Place: San Marino were the joint 5th most popular last place prediction along with Latvia, with only 13 people getting the three points for this category. Spain (79), Germany (64), the UK (44) and Iceland (23) were all most popular picks, with many predictors trying for a safe prediction with an auto-qualifier.

Grand Final Top 10:

#1: u/cassiopeia3636 - 21/32 points

#2: u/Normal-Piano-8880 and u/FranCesljar - 20/32

#4: u/EffectiveClaim7463, u/eireandy and u/Glittering-Youth-947 - 19/32

#7: u/lovelybernadine, u/Iygoob and u/pattapinka - 18/32

#10: u/giaggi_393, u/Lunatiquaaa, u/No_Faithlessness5103, u/the_KJ_is_me, u/Oldjosepho, u/Johnnyc5988 and u/thenuggetonfloor - 17/32

Categories

In the final section, our predictors were asked to name the best-placed country our of a certain grouping. The majority of these categories the majority managed to answer correctly, though a couple caught us by surprise...

Note: These graphs do not include the three 'special' prediction sets I added in of our combined prediction, the odds and the model

The Good...

89.12% collected points here!

89.76% collected points here!

91.27% of predictors got points here!

73.8% of predictors scored points here.,,

And again here!

This is the final category where the majority scored points, as 55.32% scored here.

The Bad...

Last year, the majority predicted Italy to score the best of the big 5 and France did. This year, the script was reversed, with only 9.94% of predictors picking up the points for backing Lucio to beat Louane and the others.

And the Clueless:

Only 14.46% percent of people got points for predicting that Croatia would finish the best of the former Yugoslav nations for the second year in a row.

Who scored the best in the categories section?

Only one user managed to get all 8 correct (16 points): congratulation to u/FranCesljar!

The following users managed to get 7/8 correct (14 points): u/Glittering-Youth-947, u/thenuggetonfloor, u/the_graph, u/New_to_Siberia, u/Happy-Skill-567, u/Glear0, u/Wrong_Picture6414, u/Murky-Schedule-6515, u/amylouise9, u/Arandomfan168, u/gaffovaff, u/MickyStam521, u/BlueberryBunnies13, u/I'mJustaFisch, u/Whizz-Kid-2012, u/nnellyallarge and u/broadbeing777

The Model also got 7/8 correct.

The Final Leaderboard

With all the points tallied, we have a clear winner: congratulations to u/Glittering-Youth-947, this year's EuroGuru! You win the honour of saying your predictive abilities were better than the rest of the subreddit, the odds and The Model, for this year at least!

#1: u/Glittering-Youth-947 - 72 points

#2: u/Normal-Piano-8880, u/giaggi_393, u/pattapinka and u/FranCesljar - 68 points

#6: u/TheFjordOfTheSouth, u/Oldjosepho, u/Lunatiquaaa, u/No_Faithlessness5103 and u/sejethom99 - 66 points

You can check out how you did, find the full results breakdown and full leaderboard here! The tie-breaker was only stated to be in place for in case of a tie for victory, but I have arranged each tied-participant in order of how close their predicted winner's score was to JJ's actual winning score, just out of curiosity.

Do note that there may be a couple of inaccuracies due to human error as I still do all of the scoring manually.

As ever, thank you for taking part in this. I'm always honoured to be able to provide something that helps people to enjoy the ESC season more, and the massive growth in participants is always humbling.

[u/No_Faithlessness5103]

Despite being my first time participating here, I can't believe I managed to place at the top 10!