Italy: Sanremo 2020- major changes in voting system| The winner reserves the right to representation at Eurovision!

RAI recently published the regulations of the 70th Sanremo Festival. The winner, with a slight differentiation, reserve the right to represent Italy at Eurovision 2020. The big changes concern the voting system, which is virtually completely different from what was in force until today.

Televoting only at the final

Many of you may remember that this year’s Sanremo festival was marked by the wide divergence of press and specialist voting over that of the television audience. Wanting to alleviate this problem, the festival’s new artistic director, Amadeus, is introducing a new way of voting. Eurovisionfun introduces you that, as simple as possible:

• Tuesday 4 February 2020
  The first ten candidates for the Campioni category will submit their entries. Only the pollboard has the right to vote. *

* The demo committee is made up of 300 fans across Italy who vote electronically from their home and have been specifically selected for this purpose, with demographic, age and other quality features.

• Wednesday 5 February 2020
  The other ten Campioni candidates will present their entries in Ariston for the first time. Only the poll Committee votes again.
• Thursday 6 February 2020, cover night
  The 20 Campioni perform an older participation from the 70-year history of the Sanremo Festival, accompanied by any other Italian or foreign artist they wish. It’s the well-known night of covers. Only the members of the Festival’s live band and vocal singers determine the score this night. In the end, the highest rated contestant will receive the prize of cover

  Contrary to what happened in previous years, the score of this night will count toward the end result.

• Friday 7 February 2020
  The 20 Campioni artists will perform for the second time at the festival. However, only the press committee will vote that night. **

** The press committee is made up of all accredited journalists who cover the festival and watch the festival from the roof of the Teatro Ariston.

• Saturday February 8, 2020, Final
  The 20 Campioni are performing for the third and last time. This time we have the triple vote that was in action at previous festivals. Televoting, polling committee and press committee, with televoting accounting for 50% of the results. The overall ranking will be an average of the votes of all nights and various prizes will be awarded.

A second round of voting will then take place with the top three artists voting to select the winner, who will represent Italy at the 65th Eurovision Song Contest if he wishes so. The voting system in the second round will be the same as in the first round of voting on the fifth night.

Changes in rating

As you can see, there are enough innovations in this year’s voting system. On the one hand, after the inconvenience  set up at Sanremo 2019, the panel of experts is completely removed, whose results were in stark contrast to the results of the public and accounted for 20% of the result. The press committee and poll committee will evaluate the songs on different nights and only in the final we will have the well-known triple voting of Sanremo.

The big differentiation of course comes on the night of the covers. The important thing is that after many years the members of the orchestra and vocal singers will play a significant role on the final result, since in addition to being the ones to score on the night of the covers, their score will be counted towards the final result, despite the fact that the contestants will perform different songs than their regular entries.

The winner of Sanremo has the first reason for Rotterdam

For another year, RAI intends to send Sanremo winner to the Eurovision Song Contest. A prerequisite is, of course, that he himself wants it. If the winner of the Sanremo 2020 does not wish to represent Italy in Rotterdam, then Italian public broadcaster reserves the right to choose any other artist of the Campioni category, on its own criteria.

We have a slight change here, as RAI asks the 20 major Sanremo 2020 contestants to clarify by the first night of the festival on February 4, whether they want to join Eurovision or not. This means that RAI will know on Saturday night, February 8, 2020, whoever won the prize, its representative at the 650 Eurovision Song Contest.

We remind you that the 20 artists of the Campioni category will be announced in a special broadcast by Amadeus on January 6th. The 70th Sanremo Song Festival will take place at Teatro Ariston in the small town of Liguria, San Remo, from February 4 to February 8, 2020.