San Marino 2025: Gabry Ponte with ‘Tutta L’Italia’
No upset this year in San Marino with the very predictable choice to send Gabry Ponte:
Predicting San Marino is not the easiest task unless they are completely dead on arrival which is happening less and less although even with the better entries there’s a trend of dissapointment.
Like many this year, the most serene republic have gone with the basic idea of sending a party song to attempt to secure qualification, with the party song in question being everyone's favourite national final theme: Tutta L'Italia, demoting Italy themselves to having only the third most Italian song of the year.
I actually like to draft a lot of these obvious national final winners in advance and am just going to insert an unedited note here:
"Staging is make or break and San Marino do need to throw some money at this - reinvest that uvpsm soldi and see if Rai and Ponte hismelf can chip in too. This requires big, lively staging in order to make a strong first impression. We can't just have behind a dj deck"
San Marino's national final illustrated perfectly that point but the even further unnecessarily handicapped itself by having two masked vocalists stand around. This is not the way to go about it. I appreciate this is Gabry Ponte's song, but he is going to have to take more of a backseat here. Find a charismatic vocalist and let them bring some energy to this. Ideally there'd be a big dance troupe as seen at the Sanremo final but there's of course the six person limit on stage. That is already a big issue for this, don't throw away two/three of those slots. These are the absolute basics of staging.
Anyway, this is probably the strongest San Marino has looked in a semi final ever, with '21 the other in the discussion. There are actually a good amount of points that should be in the bank here: Italy are of course voting and I'd guess will send the 12 points and there's a few more Sanremo broadcasters where this has pre exposure, mainly Albania and Switzerland. That's surely at least 25 pts just from those 3 and I could even see Estonia also liking this particularly for the meta joke of voting for the other Italian entry. The competition has also taken a bit of a dive since this was announced in the national final with Portugal and Croatia making poor choices. Certain qualifier if they sort the staging, likely in anyway and maybe the showcloser if they have delivered a good concept to the producers.
In the final I do think this falls away and slips towards the bottom of the table, potentially just ending up with support from those country's pre exposed to it. Maybe it could reach an 80~ televote at best.
I think this is destined to struggle with juries in the final with the San Marino tag not an aide in taking this seriously to begin with. We've also seen Carlo Conti and whoever else at Rai also decide this was less of a competition song and more of a meme too. Potentially last place for jurors, very likely with similar presentation.
Personal Rating: 16/20
Staging Potential: 11/20
Televote Potential: 13/20
Jury Potential: 4/20
Track Record: 6/20
Total Rating: 50/100
Early Prediction: Semi One 6th-10th, 18th-22nd if in the final