Worldvision Q4-2022

Worldvision Q4-2022
Binding Melodies
Dates
Final	22 November 2022
Host
Venue	Palau Sant Jordi Barcelona, Spain
Directed by	Sergey Ladysev
Executive supervisor	Mark Nightingale
Executive producer	Pasha Kulik
Host broadcaster	TVE
Participants
Number of entries	13
Debuting countries	Australia Hungary Japan Kazakhstan Montenegro Norway Portugal San Marino South Korea Spain Sweden Thailand United Kingdom
Returning Countries	None
Non-returning Countries	None
Participation map
Vote
Voting system	Each country awards two sets of 12, 10, 8–1 points to 10 songs: the first from a professional jury, the second from viewers.
Winning song	United Kingdom "Rise"

The Worldvision Song Contest Quarter 4 - 2022 - was the 1st edition of the Worldvision Song Contest that has been ever made. It took place in Barcelona, Spain. Organised by the International Eurofan's Countries Organisation (IECO) and host broadcaster Televisión Española (TVE), the contest was held at the Palau Sant Jordi Arena, and was consisted a final on 22 November 2022.

This was the first time that Spain hosts the contest. Thirteen countries participated in the contest (eight european countries and five from rest of the world).

The winner was the United Kingdom with the song "Rise", performed by Calum Scott. Portugal, Sweden, Spain and Hungary rounded out the top five.

Location

Palau Sant Jordi, host venue of the Q4-2022 contest.

The Q4-2022 contest took place in Barcelona, Spain. It was the first time that Spain had hosted the contest. The selected venue is the 18.000-seat Palau Sant Jordi Arena, is an indoor sporting arena and multi-purpose indoor arena.

Bidding phase

Main article: Bids for the Worldvision Summer 2022

IECO has announced the call for applications for the competition, which will be accepted from 2 to 3 May 2022. On the evening of May 3, after considering the applications, the referent group published four official candidates for the right to accept the competition:

Summer 2022 host city election – ballot results

Bid	Capacity		Round 1	Round 2
Spain, Barcelona; Palau Sant Jordi Arena	18.000		5	9
South Korea, Gangneung; Gangneung Ice Arena	12.000		3	5
United Kingdom, London; O2 Arena	20.000		3	3
United States, Tulsa; BOK Center	19.200		1	—
Total ballots			12	17

Bidding took place using two rounds of voting. After the first round, the bid from the United States left the bidding race. In the second round of voting, Spain's bid won the majority of the votes, which eliminated the need for a third round of voting.

Production

Visual design

The logo and slogan of the contest were announced on 1 June 2022. The logo is an orange fan on a traditional Spanish mosaic background. The slogan of the competition was the phrase "Binding Melodies".

An official slogan (motto) for the Summer 2022 edition

Format

It was originally planned that the competition would be held in two stages: the betting stage and the grand final, in which the other 15 countries were to join the finalist countries (Spain, Australia and Japan). However, due to the long hiatus, many participating countries withdrew their entries (almost all of them made their debut at Q1-2023).

Entries

For the Q4-2022 season, songs released on the YouTube platform no earlier than 1 January 2021 are eligible. The quotas that can be requested by the participating countries for the opportunity to exhibit a composition in a language other than the main language of the country were not distributed in the debut season.

Voting

The voting in the final consisted of the sum of votes from thirteen participating countries, which in turn gave two sets of points: the first set of points from the curators themselves (the jury), and the second set of points from the IECO observers (TV viewers). Each voter had a set of 10 Eurosystem points: 12, 10, 8, 7-1 points.

Allocation draw

Spain as the host country of the competition was randomly generated with two serial numbers to choose from. The rest of the countries went through a complete draw in order of magnitude. The competition was opened by San Marino and closed by Thailand.

Participating Countries

As of 1 May 2022, twenty-nine countries have confirmed their intention to participate in the Summer 2022 edition (later renamed Q4-2022), but only sixteen have been required to qualify for the grand final. On May 18, 2022, the organizers of the competition decided to automatically admit Australia and Japan to the final (to the host country Spain already there). These countries were recognized as founding countries of the contest (however this was abolished before the Q1-2023 contest). It was also announced that the final would be increased from 16 to 18 participating countries. On June 8, 2022, it was announced that Germany would not enter the competition without explanation. A little later on 11 July 2022, it became known that South Korea did not contact the organizers of the contest, which led to the country's automatic withdrawal from participation.

The Odds stage

Table key

◁	Countries that ultimately did not participate in the competition
	Countries that has decided to participate, but has replaced their entry

Country	Artist	Song	Language(s)
Australia	Meg Mac	Is It Worth Being Sad	English
Belarus	Drozdy	Parents' House	Belarusian
Canada	Aurora	Giving In To The Love	English
China	Layla May	Sea In Your Eyes	English
Croatia	Sigrid	Mirror	English
Denmark	Nessa Barrett	Dying On The Inside	English
Greece	Hatchie	Quicksand	English
Hungary	Adele	Oh My God	English
Italy	Laura Pausini	Scatola	Italian
Japan	Nao Aihara	Lighthouse	Japanese, English
Kazakhstan	Polnalyubvi	Your Eyes	Russian
Kenya	Sabrina Carpenter	Fast Times	English
North Macedonia	Masha	Dali Ti Ke Doznaes	Macedonian
Monaco	Purple Disco Machine, Sophie & the Giants	In The Dark	English
Norway	OneRepublic	Someday	English
Poland	Zacier	30 Złotych	Polish
Portugal	Gryffin & Kyle Reynolds	Best Is Yet To Come	English
Russia	Shortparis	Moscow Is Speaking	Russian
San Marino	Siames	No Lullaby	English
Serbia	Iraida	Supernova	English
Spain	Maia Reficco	De Ti	Spanish
Sweden	Empress Of	Save Me	English
Switzerland	Imagine Dragons & JID	Enemy	English
Thailand	Slot Machine	Only Trust	Thai
Netherlands	Suzan & Freek	Goud	Dutch
Ukraine	Tucha	It's Your Fault	Ukrainian
United Kingdom	Florence + The Machine	My Love	English
United States	Emmi	Drum	English

After the break

Apparently the contest was postponed for more and more time and eventually never has happened. Eventually, it was proposed to held it again after a long break. Since there was a long time due, it was decided that countries has a right to change their entry if they wish or keep the same one that they have selected earlier.

However, due this uncertainties and lack of proper organization, many countries has decided to withdrew. On 21 October (after almost a six-month break), only 13 countries eventually took part in the first competition, including South Korea, as well as Montenegro. While South Korea has tried to participate earlier and was not eventually on the final list due to connectivity issues within the submitting perios, Montenegro was not originally on the list of participants in the competition and IECO has done additional round of the invitations for participation due to heavy amounts of cancellations.

Some countries have replaced their original applications, like Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Norway, San Marino and United Kingdom, while other countries like Japan, Portugal, Spain and Sweden has decided to keep their entry unchanged. The delegation of Thailand decided to keep their participant, but to change their song.

Final

The final voting took place on 16-21 November 2022. Thirteen countries participated in the final, which were announced on 22 November 2022.

#	Country	Artist	Song	Language(s)	Place	Points
01	San Marino	Melanie Martinez	Soap	English	9	107
02	Japan	Nao Aihara	Lighthouse	Japanese, English	10	105
03	Norway	Alis Shuka	Not About Us	English	8	115
04	Kazakhstan	Noize MC	Century-Wolfhound	Russian	13	40
05	Sweden	Empress Of	Save Me	English	3	142
06	Hungary	Zoe Wees	Girls Like Us	English	5	127
07	Australia	Jaguar Jonze	Punchline	English	7	120
08	United Kingdom	Calum Scott	Rise	English	1	172
09	Spain	Maia Reficco	De Ti	Spanish	4	130
10	South Korea	Chung Ha	Killing Me	English, Korean	6	123
11	Montenegro	Tropico Band	Nemirna	Serbian	11	92
12	Portugal	Gryffin & Kyle Reynolds	Best is Yet to Come	English	2	151
13	Thailand	Slot Machine	PhiangWaichai	Thai	12	84

Voting

Grand Final Voting

Grand Final voting results (jury vote)

		Total score	Televoting score	San Marino	Japan	Norway	Kazakhstan	Sweden	Hungary	Australia	United Kingdom	Spain	South Korea	Montenegro	Portugal	Thailand
Contestants	San Marino	107	60			12	8	5	1	1	7	3	5	2	2	1
	Japan	105	67	2		7	1		2		1	4	2	5	4	10
	Norway	115	54	6	4		5	3	12	3	2	2	3	10	5	6
	Kazakhstan	40	33			2					3					2
	Sweden	142	44	8	12	8	12		8	8	12	8	10	3	6	3
	Hungary	127	66	3	5	3	10	8		7	8	7	6	4
	Australia	120	67	7	1	5	4	12	4		6	1	4	1	8
	United Kingdom	172	66	10	7	1	7	6	7	12		12	8	12	12	12
	Spain	130	69	4	8	4	2	7	10	5			7		10	4
	South Korea	123	53	5	10	10	6	1	6	4	4	5		7	7	5
	Montenegro	92	47		6			10	5	6		6	1		3	8
	Portugal	151	80	1	3		3	4	3	10	10	10	12	8		7
	Thailand	84	48	12	2	6		2		2	5			6	1

Grand Final voting results (televote)

		Total score	Jury score	San Marino	Japan	Norway	Kazakhstan	Sweden	Hungary	Australia	United Kingdom	Spain	South Korea	Montenegro	Portugal	Thailand
Contestants	San Marino	107	47		1	12	12	3	10	10		3	2	7
	Japan	105	38	5		8		10	8	2	7	5	1	6	10	5
	Norway	115	61		10		6	5	3	8	2		3	10	3	4
	Kazakhstan	40	7	1	3					3	12			4	4	6
	Sweden	142	98	4	4	3	10		5	1	1	1	4	5	5	1
	Hungary	127	61	8	12	4	7	12				4	12		7
	Australia	120	53			6	3	8	12		5	2	6	3	12	10
	United Kingdom	172	106	10	7	2	8	6	7	7		8	8			3
	Spain	130	61	7	8	5	5	4	6	6	8		5	2	6	7
	South Korea	123	70	6	2	10	1	1	2	4	3	12		8	2	2
	Montenegro	92	45	3	6		2	2			4	7	7		8	8
	Portugal	151	71	2	5	7	4	7	4	12	6	10	10	1		12
	Thailand	84	36	12		1			1	5	10	6		12	1

Split Results

Split results (Grand Final)
Place	Combined		Jury		Televoting
	Country	Points	Country	Points	Country	Points
1	United Kingdom	172	United Kingdom	106	Portugal	80
2	Portugal	151	Sweden	98	Spain	69
3	Sweden	142	Portugal	71	Japan	67
4	Spain	130	South Korea	70	Australia	67
5	Hungary	127	Spain	61	Hungary	66
6	South Korea	123	Hungary	61	United Kingdom	65
7	Australia	120	Norway	61	San Marino	60
8	Norway	115	Australia	53	Norway	54
9	San Marino	107	San Marino	47	South Korea	53
10	Japan	105	Montenegro	45	Thailand	48
11	Montenegro	92	Japan	38	Montenegro	47
12	Thailand	84	Thailand	36	Sweden	44
13	Kazakhstan	40	Kazakhstan	7	Kazakhstan	33

12 points

The winning entry from United Kingdom has received 12 points from almost half of the jury participants (5/12), while the televotes has not given a single highest score to the winner.

12 points awarded by the juries # Recipient Countries giving 12 points 5 United Kingdom Australia, Montenegro, Portugal, Spain, Thailand 3 Sweden Japan, Kazakhstan, United Kingdom 1 Portugal South Korea Australia Sweden Norway Hungary San Marino Norway Thailand San Marino

12 points awarded by the televoting # Recipient Countries giving 12 points 3 Hungary Japan, South Korea, Sweden 2 Portugal Australia, Thailand Australia Hungary, Portugal San Marino Norway, Kazakhstan Thailand San Marino, Montenegro 1 South Korea Spain Kazakhstan United Kingdom

Public voting representatives of participating countries

The viewers of the participating countries could be other members of the organization or other invited persons. Public voting was assigned to each country as per the most possible compatability of points with the Jury Member.

This was the first season for the participation of viewers from Australia, Austria, Colombia, France, India, Malta, Poland and Russia.

Country	Full Name & Origin	IECO Membership
Australia	Lukas Mariehamn	Poland
Hungary	Alina Efanova	China
Japan	Franklyn Baldacchino	Malta
Kazakhstan	Jimmy Mardigras	Observer
Montenegro	Artsiom Chalapa	Observer
Norway	Timothy Ahlgren	Observer
Portugal	Sergey Silkin	Croatia
San Marino	Zhan Isaak	Netherlands
South Korea	Alexander Pabon	United States
Spain	Vladislav Korshunov	United States
Sweden	Kiran Sebastian	Observer
Thailand	Adrien Alonso-Dussel	Observer
United Kingdom	Alexander Sivak	Greece

Incidents

French artist

On 17 May 2022, the organizers of the competition announced the possible withdrawal of France from the competition. As is well known later that day, the French delegation was greatly offended by the ridicule of a possible representative of the country. The clip of a possible representative, in the opinion of the contest supervisor, did not have a full competitive look. In response to the non-admission of the entry, the head of the French delegation said that he wanted to switch to the curation of Argentina, as he expressed a desire to submit Latin-American compositions to the competition, which would not be allowed to be curated by France due to the presence of quotas for languages ​​in the competition. On May 18, at an extraordinary meeting of the members of the organizational group of the competition, they decided to satisfy the initial request of Nikita Likhanov to curate Monaco, which was not initially included in the lists for participation.

Withdrawal of Kenya

On 18 May 2022, Alexander Kustov, curator of Kenya, announced his refusal to participate in the competition in the future. The reason for this, as it turned out later, was the political views on the military events in Ukraine in 2022, which were fundamentally opposite to the main number of curators of the competition and low scores at the odds stage due to inactivity. On May 19, competition supervisor Mark Nightingale announced that Kenya was not officially removed from the competition and still can possibly participate. However, on 26 May, the curator of the country returned to full participation.

Withdrawal of Monaco and New Zealand

Prior to the situation with the curators of Japan, New Zealand and Monaco, a chatbot was installed in the contest chat to calculate activity. The IECO Administration did not like the irregular activity pattern of the curator of the Japan and others including Ireland and Kazakhstan, after which they accused Japan of deliberately cheating on the rating due to having twice as much as any others result. As a result of the disputes, the Japan Curator, along with the New Zealand and Monaco Curators (who supported the Japanese Curator's side), were excluded from the chat. However, on May 30, after two-sided negotiations between the curators of Australia and Japan, a compromise was reached, according to which Japan returns to participate in the competition with the following concessions: the date for announcing the representative of the country will be shifted to May 15, 2022 (due to shifts in the selection dates due to the impossibility of announcing the participants in the selection 26 and May 28) and a conservative view with full administration discussions on the chat disqualifications. The curators of New Zealand and Monaco were also accused in the unprofessional behavior and being rude to the adminstration, hence that New Zealand was not allowed to return due to breach of the conduct and Monaco did not returned voluntarily, which leaded to theier non-participation and they were automatically removed from it. On 12 June 2022, it was announced that Monaco would participate in the competition.

Political Context in entries of Belarus, Ukraine, Poland & Russia

On June 2, 2022, after the morning update of the competition rates, it turned out that the competition composition from Ukraine moved to the first line of the rating, which displeased a number of participating curators from Canada, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Greece, China, North Macedonia. The fact is that in a separate survey of each announced application, the participants noticed the fact that Ukraine's application was rated worse than the others and it is very illogical to observe the country in first place in the rates. The curator of Japan confirmed that back in May 2022, he requested a scheme and formula for calculating the rating for each participating country, but no answer was received, which led to big questions. The curator of China called the finding of Ukraine in the first place as a "show of compassion", and the curator of Hungary threatened to withdraw the country from participating in the competition if no explanations were received from the organizers of the competition. In the evening, a table was announced with data analysis based on the results of each poll of announced applications, and it turned out that, according to data reconciliation, Ukraine's application was located on the penultimate of 13 announced compositions. It is noteworthy that China, which was placed in 7th place in the rating rates, turned out to be the absolute favorite in the poll. On the evening of June 2, 2022, the curator of Australia reported that the data from the poll of the Ukrainian application was not taken into account for the calculation of rating rates, which re-introduced the dissatisfaction of the curators of Canada, China and Hungary. The curators of Japan, Kazakhstan and the Netherlands expressed mild dissatisfaction about this.

On June 4, 2022, was announced the representative of Belarus, the Drozdy group, which was selected internally with the song "Hata Batkou". The choice of the artist caused outrage from Canada, which accused the song of having political overtones. Different opinions were shared about making the contest political from other participants. However, the Belarusian broadcaster - BTRC and its representative have stated that there is no any political message in the selected entry and asked not to find or create them. Belarusian entry was not being asked to be replaced and was accepted.

On June 7, 2022, Poland have selected internally a song called "30 Zlotych" by a polish band Zacier with its lead singer Miroslav. The meaning of the song is to showcase the bad influence of capitalism to the different groups of the society and to send a message about young generation to be lazy and arrogant. The entry was submitted according to the rules of the contest and didn't found any support or resistance from other broadcasters, hence was accepted.

On June 10, 2022, Russia have selected a song called "CoCoCo / The Structures Don't Go To The Streets" which had a clear political statement about the internal protests from previously selected group called Shortparis. It was expected, since the selected Broadcaster has several restrictions in Russia. Later, the IECO administration requested to change the song due to it's published date, which was out of range of the rules. The entry has been exchanged to a collab of Shortparis with the Veteran Choir of the World War II. New submitted entry was as well not accepted, since the Choir can't represent the country due to the Worldvision policy and the broadcaster was requested to submit an entry again. After all, the selected representative have presented another new song called "Moscow Is Speaking" which as well had a political background. The song however was accepted since having no rules break and compiled with the IECO/Worldvision policies. None of the other participants had extended any statetments except Kazakhstan broadcaster had shown support and asked the Choir to be allowed as an exception.