On 16 May in Moscow, Russia, Europe's top song will be chosen for the 54th time at the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC). The occasion is the 12th time that MindMatics has been tasked with organising the SMS voting for a European Broadcasting Union (EBU) event as a partner to digame mobile, Cologne, Germany. The ESC is the largest TV voting event in the world.
A total of 42 nations are taking part this year. As was the case last year, the 2009 semi-finals have been divided into two groups of countries, with 37 nations battling it out for one of the 20 available places in the final. The first semi-final being held on 12 May 2009. As reigning titleholder, Russia has already qualified for the final, along with France, Spain, England and Germany as the largest participating countries.
In the final, viewers will have precisely 15 minutes following the final live performance to register their vote. MindMatics will then bundle all the SMS votes received from the respective countries and forward these to a pan-European voting platform provided by digame mobile, Cologne. There the final result of the voting will be ascertained from all the SMS messages and calls registered, before being sent to Moscow and each participating country.
On Saturday night at 9 pm CET over 100 million viewers throughout Europe will be following the ultimate musical event on TV.
"We are delighted that this year we are once again working with MindMatics AG as a cooperation partner for the Eurovision Song Contest", stated Werner Klötsch, Managing Director of digame mobile. "For us, reliability is of prime importance and MindMatics has already proved during previous joint events that it is more than capable of meeting our exceptionally high standards", he continued.
