Welcome to Melodifestivalen's final 2022. The market is getting hotter and hotter on Cornelia Jakobs to win Melodifestivalen. The press room buzz is of the opinion that it is a foregone conclusion, but there is the question mark about a few things - the size of Cornelia support on the app vote (especially with children), the margin of victory with the international juries, and just how big will the Anders Bagge public vote be.
For the record, I do think Cornelia, but I do think we are seeing a close one.
Anyway, here are our five tips from the BetEurovision team.
Cornelia Jakobs to win jury: 1.56 (Smarkets)
The odds on Cornelia Jakobs winning Melodifestivalen seem to be shortening. It is the expected winner, but to win I suspect she needs to win the jury vote by a long margin above Anders Bagge.
The 1.56 is better value than the 1.6 to win the entire thing based on the scale of televote victory we expect for Bagge.
I'm more confident in this outcome because of the running order and the selection of juries which is very Western and able to 'get it' with this raw performance.
Liamoo 2nd favorite here is a logical second place but not one I can see getting enough 12s...rather a smattering of middling points. If you want a wildcard here look at Lundvik @ 26s - he did landslide the juries two years ago.
Liamoo to beat Klara Hammarström: 4.75 (betsson)
As Liamoo is currently around 3.0 in the top 3 market this price is absurdly long. The reason for the length is that the Swedish bookies have Klara short because of streaming success, and see Liamoo as a ghostly figure as he languishes on Spotify in comparison.
Yet with Liamoo expected 2nd with juries Klara will need a big televote swing to come through and there's no guarantee that her streams get points across the board (I expect Klara to be dominating points from young people, less so the elderly).
Yet, if those young people vote again after the juries and it appears to be a Cornelia/Liamoo fight for the finish, which may bring more votes Liamoo's way in a close finish. Relies on jury love but the gap between the odds for these two is absurdly large currently.
John Lundvik to be a Faith Kakembo: 1.72 (Unibet)
John Lundvik and Änglavakt set the world tepid, but show a songwriter that looks effortlessly professional and a master of his craft. I expect juries will keep their love burning to him (not understanding the somewhat trite lyrics) and allow a decent score there, plus some public love for the 2020 Let's Dance champion.
Faith Kakembo on the other hand stuttered through a weak heat 3 and while visually nice Faith didn't add value to the number. This song is well staged but one expects any support to come via juries as there's little public love for this and a single figure televote expected in the final.
I'll double up this thought with...
Faith Kakembo to be last: 3.5 (Bet365)
Faith Kakembo is the most obvious last place contender. Theoz is too popular and slick to get a low televote score, especially with children, and the other Semi Final candidates have unique reasons to vote for them/get jury support. The weakest would be likely Anna Bergendahl but she is likely to get a handful of points from the older demographics to just get out of the bottom placing.
A long shot here would be Robin Bengtsson at 15s (Unibet/Betsson) as his song has done nothing since finishing second in heat 2. Yet the assumption is Robin's fanbase gets him out of the bottom slots regardless.
And a daft one to finish this off with...
Anders Bagge to finish in the top 5: 1.1 (Svenska Spel)
Svenska Spel offer odds on top 2, 3, 4 and 5. Anders Bagge here is crazy short of course but he is going to get that televote win (about 1.2 for that on Smarkets which may be even better value) and with that a top 5 placing is basically assured as many songs split jury or televote, and the overall quality isn't high enough that Anders is getting a 0 with the juries.
Enjoy the show and the biggest NF betting market there is!
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