The 2021 Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final will take place tonight! Every year, during Eurovision, betting odds are the main source of quantitative information used by Eurovision fans to make predictions about which countries have the best chance of winning Eurovision.

This year, just for fun, ESCBubble decided to make its own statistical predictions for the Grand Final looking at historical data from the last 8 Eurovision Song Contests.

Before the show, we had also made statistical predictions regarding the Semi-Finals. In Semi-Final 1, our pre-show model predicted 8/10 of the qualifiers, omitting Belgium and Lithuania. Semi-Final 2 was a bit more unpredictable as the model was only able to correctly identify 7/10 of the qualifiers, omitting Bulgaria, Portugal and Albania.

The statistical model used to make our predictions for the Final takes into account a variety of factors including:

• Song popularity (derived from YouTube views, adjusted for like/dislike ratio);
• Position in the running order;
• Popularity of the entries performed right before and after;
• Big 5 Entries;
• Language.

We used a Gradient Boosting Regressor to derive the predicted rankings of the Eurovision 2021 Grand Final and a Gradient Boosting Classifier to calculate the probability that each song finishes in the top-10.

Based on our model, here is what the numbers say:

According to our model, a very close battle between Switzerland, Italy, Ukraine, Iceland and Malta should be expected in the top-5 tonight. But at the end of the day, our model predicts that Gjon’s Tears from Switzerland will win Eurovision 2021 with his song “Tout l’Univers”, with Italy and Ukraine completing the podium.

Interestingly enough, the model predicts an excellent 6th place finish for Senhit and Flo Rida from San Marino.  Such a result would top Serhat’s 19th position back in 2019 and give San Marino its best result to date in the contest.  Based on the numbers, France in 7th place, followed by Finland, Lithuania & Russia are expected to complete the top-10. Serbia and Greece might potentially challenge some of the countries listed above for a top-10 spot.

While the predictions are pretty favourable for Italy and France, we cannot say the same for the rest of the Big 5 & the Netherlands. Given their unfavourable running order slots, our model expects Spain and Germany to finish at the bottom of the scoreboard. The odds are not in favour of the United Kingdom and this year’s host country either, who respectively have a 3% and 1% chance of finishing in the top-10 tonight.

What do you think about these predictions? Feel free to let us know in the comments below or on our social media pages.