Eurovision 2023 in the UK

If anyone else is still trying to get Eurovision Final tickets, I thought, now I'm sorted myself, I'd share some knowledge acquired.

Make sure you have an active Ticketmaster account with means of payment attached. They seem to enforce a password reset every few months, so don't discover that you have to do one during a sale purchase.

Resale tickets are occasionally popping up. Lunchtime through early afternoon is when I have been seeing them.

Refresh this for Grand Final afternoon preview: www.ticketmaster.co.uk/eurovision-song-contest-grand-final-afternoon-liverpool-13-05-2023/event/37005E5BF69A3193
Refresh this for Grand Final: www.ticketmaster.co.uk/eurovision-song-contest-grand-final-live-liverpool-13-05-2023/event/37005E5CB24B11CC
(These, and links for the other Eurovision events, can also be found from the main Ticketmaster Eurovision page.)

When a seat pops up, in my experience, you will not be quick enough to capture it. It will always say the ticket is no longer available. However, don't despair, and don't close that page. The URL will be something like:

secure.ticketmaster.co.uk/en-gb/?id=33741685&qty=1&eventId=37005E5BF69A3193&venueId=452081&artistId=1700845

Keep refreshing that page with F5. After about 10 minutes, if you are lucky, it will come available to purchase. (My theory is that, as an anti-bot measure, they delay the release of the seat at this point so that a random user gets it rather than the fastest.  Either that or there are a lot people basketing tickets which they then release.)

Unfortunately, you then have to enter your name and address details, and it appears not to lock the ticket to you until you click on from that screen, so you have to be very quick. Even if you lose it at this point, it's still worth refreshing for another 10-15 minutes in case the ticket comes back. (You have to F5 then press ENTER to confirm form resubmission here.)

Sadly, this all can come at a cost. Even though you will do all of the above as a human trying to get a ticket for your own personal use, Ticketmaster do not care, and will declare you to be a bot for having pressed F5 too quickly or too often, and block your IP address. I had a 24-hour block a couple of weeks ago. There are lots of people online complaining about permanent IP address blocks too. In some cases, it seems the cause was simply to be located in an overseas country.  (In fact, now I come to think about it, my block happened after I VPN'd into my work network, which makes it look like I'm in Germany.)

As you have to sign in to your Ticketmaster account before you can do any of the above, Ticketmaster could set blocks at user (i.e. account) level. Bizarrely, they set it at IP address level, which is even more unfair on anyone who happens to share that IP address or, in the case of a permanent block, have it assigned to them later.

If you do get blocked, the only way out seems to be to wait to see if is temporary and clears, or to access Ticketmaster using a different IP address, which, for the same user account, they are more than happy to permit, which must be a lifesaver to the actual bots.

I really don't get the Sweden love this year. It isn't half the song the Euphoria was.

Finland was my fave of the night. Followed by Portugal

Do Ireland deliberately send mediocre acts because they don't want to win?

Well I can't understand 90% of what she sings on either track. Her diction hasn't improved in 11 years

Finland my favourite so far, Sweden was a bit boring.
Thought the staging was excellent and the BBC made the venue look much bigger than it is.
Not sure why they have such a a massive stage as the whole thrust part is hardly used.
Hannah was superb as expected, Alisha just annoys me whatever she does.

Most of countries don‘t want to win…that is the reason why Germany respectively NDR is sending trash for years now…

Even as a big 5 country you pay only around 400.000 Euros and you get 2 semifinals…and a Saturday evening prime time show…

Normally an own produced Saturday evening show will cost you 1 million or more …

But if you win the ESC… it will cost you 20-30 million Euros

About Sweden… her stage performance is also a cheap copy of Euphoria…

I really hope that she won‘t win…but sadly it is very likely

I think countries like Croatia and Moldova (and also Finland) were voted through because they stand for what the ESC is about for many - ridiculous overwrought costumes and nonsensical performances (although Croatia's song is actually an anti-war song and the group won the national competition by a mile).

The last years were pretty boring with far too many ballads and "safe" performances, so I'm glad more of the truly ridiculous ESC acts moved on to the final. Czechia's pink girls were clearly emulating K-Pop bands and probably got some of the teen vote, along with the drippy little Serb who looked like he walked out of Twilight.

Ireland and Latvia had decent "safe" songs, but just nothing that stood out. I'd say the same for Sweden, but then the ongoing success and adoration for Sweden's middling pop songs has always baffled me.

Bring on the second semi tonight!

Staging wise I think it’s great. We spent years sending awful staging and it feels like the UK team has definitely learnt a lesson. And I think Mae’s personality really shines through. But the vocals are quite disappointing. Particularly when it isn’t exactly the hardest song to sing. It needs more backing vocals particularly in the chorus.

I did see that Mae has been put on vocal rest so maybe her voice is a bit tired right now and she isn’t fully going for it during the rehearsals. Hopefully on the night she will just give it everything. It was never a contender for the win but with a solid performance I think it could still get a respectable score.

Very weak second semi final.

Some poor vocals particularly with certain male singers not have strong enough falsetto

Loved the drag interval act

But a meh evening overall

In what way do you feel it is political? Yes countries vote for their neighbours, but that really has no influence over the eventual outcome. I would say, certainly when you're with a Eurovision crowd, that it's the least political place to be.

Hannah bloody Waddingham, that's all I have to say.