Bet on Swedish Eurovision online

A simple online search will provide plenty of websites with odds for the competitors of Mello. Some of them provide odds for all the national Eurovision pre-selection competitions, which makes following the odds easier if one is betting on several of them.

Many Melodifestivalen betting sites also give the competitors their chance of winning in percentages, which might make it easier to understand who is supposed to fare well than merely looking at the odds. However, as in betting generally, what matters is not just to guess who wins, but to try and bet on a winner with high odds.

So how do the odds work? Each competitor is assigned a number that represents their odds, for example, at the time of writing Klara Hammarström is given odds of 5 on average; each betting company gives a slightly different number, since giving the odds is not an exact science.

Klara has the lowest odds, which means she is currently considered by the betting experts to be the likely winner. The odds of 5 means that if you bet 1 euro, you will get 5 euros back, aka you win 4 euros. In other words, the lower the odds are, the more subjective probability for the candidate to win, and therefore, the less you are likely to win relative to your stake.

How are the Mello odds then decided? Professional bookmakers decide on them based on various factors that are considered to matter for success in the competition. Some are based on statistical analysis on past competitions whereas some factors are more subjective. For example, when in which place one performs in the competition seems to influence one's success.

This year Klara Hammarström is performing on the seventh place in the fourth semifinal, which is a place that has produced several past winners of Melodifestivalen. That is probably a feature that has influenced her odds. Then there are the more subjective features, like how good the song and the singer seem, how well they perform, and how much experience in performing they have.