Eurovision: Our traders tip Ireland to struggle in the first semi final

If you’re solely interested in watching the Eurovision when there’s Irish involvement you better make the most of tonight’s first semi final.

Ryan O’Shaughnessy, who you may or may not recognise as a past Britain’s Got Talent contestant, pulls on the green jersey as the selectors show they’ve learned from last year, when we sent a young male singing a boring ballad, by sending another young male singing a boring ballad.

To be fair, it’s a better effort than last year and there’s a decent video to go with the song, which has saved some face.

Unfortunately for Ryan, he has been drawn in “The Semi-Final of Death”, as he’s planted smack in in the middle of a number of the leading favourites for the competition as well as some perennial qualifiers.

Our Boy in Green is performing in the first of the semi-finals and is currently 10/3 to make the finals on Saturday and 200/1 in the outright betting.

We would advise against any patriotism if you value your money and the only Ireland related bet we would consider is a Not to Qualify punt at 1/5 if you must. Sorry.

Looking for value elsewhere in this semi-final is more difficult.

Currently Croatia to qualify at 9/4 or Albania to qualify at 10/3 would be the main bets to consider.

Belgium not to qualify is 10/11 after rehearsals resulted in their price drift considerably due to both attire and vocal ability.

Finally, ‘UK to give Lithuania 10 or 12 pts in Semi Final 1 Televote’ is odds-on because of the number of expats that could swing it for the Baltic entrant.