Eurovision 2023 at the start (but the Måneskin edition was a bit like the Scudetto to Napoli)

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It’s not exactly the Champions League of the song, but it has its target audience. Which is essentially a television audience. The appointment with the Eurovision Song Contest is back, the singing festival organized by Ebu in which the associated countries participate in no particular order, each with its own singer: first semi-final on Tuesday 9 May, second on Thursday 11 May, final on Saturday 13 May. As tradition dictates, the country that won the previous edition organizes it but, since the 2022 edition was won by Ukraine with Kalush Orchestra, the 2023 edition will be organized by the United Kingdom in the name and on behalf of Ukraine, live on Rai 2 from the Liverpool Arena.

Claim: «United by Music». Because, you know, Eurovision is also political and last year’s Ukrainian victory, just a few months after the start of the Russian invasion, was by no means accidental. This year Marco Mengoni will represent Italy with Two lives, winner of the last Sanremo festival. The goal is to redeem Blanco and Mahmood’s sixth place in Turin 2022 but, in order not to go around too much, the best practice to refer to remains the same: the victory of the Måneskin in 2021 in Rotterdam. Not so much because Italy won after an epochal abstinence, but because that year’s edition represents a more unique than rare case in which the television event opens up new markets for the winning artist. In which the victory of the show brings with it significant record effects.

You know the context: according to Fimi’s elaborations on the latest Ifpi report, the markets of the nations participating in the 2023 edition express 30% of the value of the global recorded music market which last year stood at 26.2 billions of dollars. But not all discographies send their top sellers to Eurovision, also because not all countries that adhere to Ebu have national festivals such as Sanremo whose cast now largely coincides with the national streaming rankings. On the contrary: it can be said that Italy itself is somewhat unique. And no one like the Måneskin, in recent times, has been able to transform the ESC into an occasion for the internationalization of the product. Dynamics that, looking at the palmares of the event, have above all a precedent: the victory of Abba in 1974.

Rebuilding: Shut up and good it imposed itself on Esc and, after a handful of days, the Roman band discovered by X Factor 2017 appeared at the top of the US and UK charts. Because the international audience of the event has opened up the streaming platforms and followed in the footsteps of Måneskin’s reporting pieces, starting with Beggin’, an old cover by the Four Seasons dating back to the times of X Factor which has paradoxically become their most internationally successful song. And so the Måneskin found themselves at the end of 2021 in the Top 200 of 33 countries. A “perfect storm” to which a series of extraordinary factors contributed which ended up benefiting the band, Italy and the event itself. A historic event, a bit like this year’s Napoli championship. As Italians, we have to wish Mengoni our best, but it is difficult to hypothesize a new Måneskin-type case history in what is destined to remain above all a television event. In this year’s edition, as in next year’s, as in the one that will take place in two years.