Breaking the Code: Multi-level Learning in the Eurovision Song Contest

TL;DR

This paper examines how the Eurovision Song Contest has evolved over 70 years through organizational learning, highlighting rule changes, linguistic shifts, and strategic behaviors of countries in response to outcomes and peer influences.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence of multi-level learning in Eurovision, including rule adaptations and participant strategies, with insights applicable beyond the contest.

Findings

Rules changed after undesired outcomes like runaway winners.

English became the dominant language and pop the standard genre.

Some countries ignore peer pressure to prioritize national language.

Abstract

Organizations learn from the market, political, and societal responses to their actions. While in some cases both the actions and responses take place in an open manner, in many others, some aspects may be hidden from external observers. The Eurovision Song Contest offers an interesting example to study organizational level learning at two levels: organizers and participants. We find evidence for changes in the rules of the Contest in response to undesired outcomes such as runaway winners. We also find strong evidence of participant learning in the characteristics of competing songs over the 70-years of the Contest. English has been adopted as the lingua franca of the competing songs and pop has become the standard genre. Number of words of lyrics has also grown in response to this collective learning. Remarkably, we find evidence that four participating countries have chosen to ignore the "lesson" that English lyrics increase winning probability. This choice is consistent with utility functions that award greater value to featuring national language than to winning the Contest. Indeed, we find evidence that some countries -- but not Germany -- appear to be less susceptible to "peer" pressure. These observations appear to be valid beyond Eurovision.