During the second semi-final of Eurovision 2025, RTVE commentators Tony Aguilar and Julia Varela discussed the need to open a debate about Israel’s presence in the festival. They highlighted that the Gaza invasion by Tel Aviv has resulted in over 50,000 civilian casualties, including nearly 16,000 children. They used the introduction video of Yuval Raphael’s song, the Israeli representative, to clarify the public broadcaster’s stance, one of the few openly advocating for a review of the Middle Eastern country’s participation in the contest.
The Israeli public broadcaster protested, and on Friday, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) threatened RTVE with “punitive fines” if any reference to the situation in Gaza is repeated. “It is essential that your commentators adhere to these rules without exception […] to preserve Eurovision’s apolitical nature and comply with the ethics and standards established in the rules. We expect full cooperation from RTVE to prevent recurrence. Any further breach may result in punitive fines according to the rules,” warned a statement signed by the president of the Eurovision Reference Group, Swiss Bakel Walden, and Swedish Martin Osterdahl, the festival’s executive supervisor.
It would be a tough decision to kick out one if the “Big 5”, i.e. the ones that pay the most for the event, even at the expense of Israeli sponsorship and paid televote.
The big 5 each pay around €300,000 as an entrance fee, and about the same again for its delegation accommodation, recording the song, costumes and props. So it’s a very modest sum, and if one individual broadcaster backed out, that money would be found elsewhere.
The whole point of the ESC is that it’s a whole evening’s programming (and the week leading up) that is extremely cheap on a per-broadcaster basis. For example, €300,000 is roughly equivalent to two EastEnders episodes.
at that cost point Israel would have no issues subsiding the missing funding for exposure…
Here in uk presenter said something like “i am not sure what you are hearing on broadcadt, but here the reception is mixed”. While on broadcadt we heard cheers