"Croatia may be playing spoiler in the second semi-final, making this year's Eurovision Song Contest that much more unpredictable.
Sunday's Eurovision Song Contest festivities in Kyiv included the second round of rehearsals for the Big Five and host country Ukraine, as well as the red carpet opening ceremony for this year's competition. With 24 hours worth of data for the entire second semi-final field, let's take a look at how the rankings of those videos may indicated popularity going into Thursday's performances.
Here are the top 10 videos from the second semi-final second rehearsals, as of 10:30pm CET / 4:30pm Eastern:
- Netherlands
- Serbia
- Croatia
- Bulgaria
- FYR Macedonia
- Denmark
- Belarus
- Romania
- Israel
- Austria
Lithuania and Estonia dropped out of the top 10 from when we looked at the first rehearsal footage, and I fear this may be bad news for both countries. Lithuania sits in 13th and Estonia is in 15th, with at least 10,000 views behind Austria. In terms of the combined viewership for both rehearsals, here's how the field shakes out:
- Netherlands
- FYR Macedonia
- Croatia
- Bulgaria
- Serbia
- Belarus
- Romania
- Lithuania
- Israel
- Denmark
Croatia is poised to play spoiler based on earlier predictions. Hungary sits in 11th, trailing by fewer than 600 views. The Netherlands is the clear favorite of all the rehearsal footage, garnering more than half a million views between both videos. Though the second rehearsal was not nearly as dominant in the rankings (it currently trails Belgium from the first semi-final), it is safe to say O'G3NE is making a run for the gold.
Monday, we'll take a look at how the rehearsal videos for the six autoqualifiers have performed. Tuesday will feature our official predictions for the first semi-final. We'll have follow-up coverage after the competition, then offer our predictions for the second semi-final on Thursday. Are we excited yet?"