We’ve got less than a week to go until rehearsals start in Tel Aviv for the Eurovision Song Contest 2019!! Yaaaaayy!!!

But before the artists, delegations, press and fans from all over the world descend on Israel, who do the bookies think will be the ones to watch once we get there? Who is going for gold? Who will be languishing in the semis? Let’s take a look!

We’ve compared the current odds from Oddschecker.com with the odds they were offering just over a month ago when we’d just found out all the songs and acts. Now we’ve had the busy ESC parties and pre-events season, has there been much movement?

1st – The Netherlands (no change)

2nd – Russia (no change)

3rd – Italy (up 2)

4th – Switzerland (no change)

5th – Sweden (down 2)

6th – Iceland (up 1)

7th – Cyprus (down 1)

8th – Malta (no change)

9th – Greece (no change)

10th – Norway (up 1)

11th – France (up 1)

12th – Portugal (down 2)

13th – Azerbaijan (up 2)

14th – Australia (up 11)

15th – Spain (up 5)

16th – Slovenia (down 3)

17th – North Macedonia (up 1)

18th – Armenia (down 4)

19th – Czech Republic (up 4)

20th – United Kingdom (up 1)

21st – Belgium (down 5)

22nd – Estonia (down 3)

23rd – Denmark (down 6)

24th – Israel (up 2)

25th – Serbia (up 12)

26th – Hungary (up 4)

27th – Albania (up 8)

28th – Ireland (down 6)

29th – Finland (down 2)

30th – Poland (up 1)

31st – Germany (down 7)

32nd – Romania (down 3)

33rd – Lithuania (no change)

34th – Belarus (no change)

35th – Austria (down 7)

36th – Croatia (down 4)

37th – Montenegro (up 1)

38th – San Marino (up 1)

39th – Latvia (up 1)

40th – Moldova (down 4)

41st – Georgia (no change

Well, well, well! The last few weeks have indeed seen a lot of movement. The biggest climber is Australia, defying gravity by climbing a staggering 11 places to 14th, with big gains for Albania and Serbia too. Amazingly, Lithuania hasn’t budged from 34th for months!

At the other end of the scale, Austria and Germany have both tumbled 7 places, with Ireland and Denmark also suffering in the betting odds. The extremes haven’t changed at all, with the Netherlands still leading the pack and Georgia at the bottom of the heap.

But before you go gabling your life’s savings, consider this – these are the odds based more or less purely on the song. Once we start seeing staging and getting a feel for performances, these could all change! Cyprus had rather unimpressive odds before heading to Lisbon, but rocketed up once we’d seen Eleni burn up the stage!

So the question is… who is about to surprise us all?!

Author: James Scanlan
Source: oddschecker.com
Image Source: oddschecker.com