Melodifestivalen 2023: Final Preview
It's Melodifestivalen final time! Usually one of the most anticipated nights of the national final season if not the standout in it's own right. This year is a little different however with the most obvious of obvious winners and not a great lot of quality elsewhere. Loreen is going to win and comfortably.
With that tidied up, I'll give a quick rundown on what the escbetting abacus has thrown up:
1. Loreen 188pts
2. Smash into Pieces 116pts
3. Marcus and Martinus 105pts
4. Maria Sur 95pts
5. Fjalgren and Friends 89pts
6. Kiana 89pts
7. Nordman 56pts
8. Panetoz 46pts
9. Mariette 43pts
10. Paul Rey 40pts
11. Theoz 37pts
12. Tone Sekelius 22pts
The 2nd-6th grouping I have is well within a range of error to make trying to find a top 4/5 not worth it. I'm expecting the gap to be close enough to flip significantly if one juror is particularly wanting to support Maria Sur and hates rock for example. To be honest, I would have expected it to take a stronger entry than Smash Into Pieces' to allow a rock entry to do so well but that's where we are and I expect them to tick along consistently and throw in fewer low/no points than the rest. I'm not keen in getting involved in any of the top 2, 3,4,5 markets however.
In the other half of the field I'm expecting last place to go to Tone Sekelius. Paul Rey is a safe option for jurors to give a consistent 4/5pts to and I expect Mariette to just tick over enough. Theoz has consistently underachieved expectations in melfest and I'm not sure he gets much jury whilst the older demographics will likely let him down again. Semi one with Tone (and Fjalgren tbf) feels like a lifetime ago and going early in spot 2 further separates them from the competition. If we're on fan base votes only (and I'm guessing we're not far off that) we should have a backable contender for last unless there's any jury randomness I can't quite account for.
My Position
As stated a while back in the pre-song preview I started with a fairly even Sur-Loreen split (around 5s each). Like much of the market I began shifting this and upping it on Loreen as the weeks went on including some big post song bets c1.5-1.7. It's the deepest I've ever been on a melodifestivalen edition outright and unless the seemingly impossible happens it will be a much more profitable showing than usual in Sweden.
I'm generally looking for Tone to underperform and Kiana to overperform in the various heads to heads with Nordman beating Rey also a big hope. There are o/u points markets available too and I'm involved where my calculations have gave a significantly different score.
See you all on the other side...