TERMS AND CONDITIONS

REST OF THE WORLD PAID ONLINE VOTING FOR THE 2024 EUROVISION SONG CONTEST

 

The Paid Online Voting for the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 (“ESC 2024”) outside the participating countries (the “ESC Rest of the World Voting”), available on https://www.esc.vote, to which these Terms and Conditions apply, is operated by Once Germany GmbH (formerly known as digame GmbH), Schanzenstrasse 38, D-51063 Cologne Germany (the “ESC Voting operator”)

 

The ESC 2024 is produced under the auspices of the European Broadcasting Union - Union Européenne de Radio-Télévision, L'Ancienne-Route 17A Postal Box 45, 1218 Le Grand-Saconnex / Geneva Switzerland (the "EBU").

 

The voting rules are issued by the EBU. More details can be found on eurovision.tv.

 

Members of the public in the Rest of the World, i.e. outside the countries participating in the ESC 2024, (hereinafter the "Voter(s)" or “You(r)”) may vote for songs participating in the ESC 2024 by casting their votes online via the paid online voting platform available at https://www.esc.vote (the "Voting Platform").

By accessing the Voting Platform and casting votes online during the ESC 2024, the Voter hereby expressly agrees to be bound by these Terms and Conditions and undertake not to interfere with the voting and/or the rules set out hereunder.

1.            The Voter is invited to vote for all participating songs during audience voting time frames (“Voting Window(s)”) as follows:

a.        Semi-Final 1

-            on May, 06th 2024, the Voting Window will open after the end of the transmission of the Dress Rehearsal 2 of Semi Final 1 on Monday night and will close at the beginning of the Live broadcast of Semi-Final 1 on May 07th 2024.

-            on May, 07th 2024, the Voting Window will re-open after the last performance in the Live Semi-Final 1 and close 15-25 minutes later when announced by the hosts.

 

b.        Semi-Final 2

-            on May, 08th 2024, the Voting Window will open after the end of the transmission of the Dress Rehearsal 2 of Semi Final 2 on Wednesday night and will close at the beginning of the respective Live broadcast of the Semi-Final 2 on May 09th 2024.

-            on May, 09th 2024, the Voting Window will re-open after the last performance in the Live Semi-Final 2 and will close 15-25 minutes later when announced by the hosts.

 

c.        Grand Final

-            on May, 10th 2024, the Voting Window will open after the end of the transmission of the Dress Rehearsal 2 of the Grand-Final on Friday night and will close at the beginning of the Live broadcast of the Grand-Final on Saturday, May 11th 2024.

-            on May, 11th 2024, the Voting Window will re-open before the start of the first performance in the Live Grand-Final and will close approximately 25-40 minutes after the end of the last performance, when announced by the hosts.

 

For the live streams schedule on these dates, please refer to the information available on eurovision.tv. The length of the Voting Window(s) may vary and are not fixed up front.

 

  1. In order to enable us to assess the eligibility of Your votes, the voting rules of the ESC 2024 require us to determine the Voters’ country of origin in a secure and verifiable manner. For doing so, we rely on micropayments to determine the country of registration of the bank that issued the Voters’ payment card, as a proxy of the Voters’ country of origin. To cast votes from a country outside a country participating in the ESC 2024, the Voters’ payment card must be issued by a bank in a country outside of the participating countries of the ESC 2024. Individual Voters’ locations are identified by means of a unique identifier based on their payment card. When you cast your vote from a country outside a country participating in the ESC 2024 and that Your card was issued in a country participating in the ESC 2024 or in a country where payments cannot be processed by payment providers due to legal or other regulatory reasons, the transaction will be rejected, and Your votes will not be taken into consideration.

 

  1. Each Voter can cast votes by following the instructions on https://www.esc.vote/. In each Voting Window, Voters will be able to select multiple participating songs and cast multiple votes on any individual participating song, up to a maximum of 20 votes in total during each Voting Window. Each Voter will be allowed to buy up to 20 votes per transaction and will be allowed to proceed with only one transaction per payment card number and per Voting Window (the number of Your payment card will be used to verify fulfilment of this condition). Any additional transaction attempts with the same payment card number within the same Voting Window will be rejected. If the Voter casts less than 20 votes within a given transaction, the Voter will not be able to cast additional votes afterwards in the same Voting Window.

 

  1. Each individual vote costs 0,99 Euros (EUR) and can be paid by the payment methods offered in the Voting Platform. Any sales tax or value added tax is at our expense and is determined by national tax rules of the country in which the Voter resides. For clarity: 20 votes will cost 20 times 0.99 EUR, and thus a total of 19.80 EUR. Please note that the transaction will be operated between You and the payment provider that is in charge of processing the payment in the country from where You vote.

 

  1. Upon successful payment, Voters’ vote(s) will be validated in the database of the ESC Voting Operator and counted towards the ESC Rest of the World’s Voting result. The Voter will not receive a tangible quid pro quo for payment, the absence of which will not be valid grounds to dispute the payment transaction. Voters will receive a payment receipt from the payment provider at the email address they have provided.

 

  1. If the Voter is not the owner of the payment card used, the Voter shall have proper permission of the payment card owner to use such card. We will not be held liable for any such unauthorised payments.

 

  1. Minors under 18 years of age are not permitted to cast a vote without the permission of their parent(s) or guardian(s).

 

  1. The country from where the Voter votes, the participating song(s) for which the Voter has voted and the payment method and origin that has been chosen will be processed and saved by the ESC Voting Operator to calculate the official final results of the voting in the ESC 2024 and perform aggregated statistics on the voting. For purpose of verifying any refund request (where possible and relevant) or investigating possible voting irregularities, we may need to consult Your payment data. If you do not agree to this, please do not vote. Where such investigations are required, we will only use Your payment data for the purposes of processing refunds or investigating possible voting irregularities and will not publish or provide it to anyone without permission, except where required for enforcement of these terms. The Privacy Notice which informs the Voter about the processing of personal data is available here. [insert link]. Please note that payments of votes will also be processed according to the payment provider’s own privacy notice and terms.

 

  1. The aggregate of all votes from the ESC Rest of the World Voting will be converted into the 12 Point system used to calculate the outcome of the Eurovision Song Contest and will count as one additional country that will be added to the points awarded by each participating country.

 

In the Semi-Finals, the audience vote of the participating countries having a contestant represented in each of them and of the Rest of the World countries will be used to determine the total points results. The ten highest scoring songs in each Semi-Final once all the audience points have been awarded will go through to the Grand Final.

 

In the Grand Final, the audience vote of all the participating countries and of the Rest of the World countries as well as the votes cast by professional juries in the participating countries will be combined to determine the total points results.

 

The sum of points a participating song has received from the audience votes across all participating countries and in the Rest of the World countries will be presented and the final results of the voting will be announced by the hosts of the 2024 ESC during each Live Show. For more information on how the results are calculated, please see on eurovision.tv.

 

  1. The winner of the Grand Final shall be the participating song which has obtained the highest number of points from the combined calculation of the total points from all of the audience results and the total points awarded from all of the national juries from all participating countries at the time of announcement of the results.

 

  1. In the event of a tie, the ESC 2024 rules prescribe how a tie is resolved. More information can be found in the published rules on eurovision.tv.

 

  1. For the avoidance of doubt, the participation in the voting is not a competition and there shall be no prize awarded to the Voters. Voters shall each bear their own costs and expenses incurred and/or arising from their participation in the voting and use of the Voting Platform including (without limitation), telecommunications, network and all such other charges and out-of-pocket expenses as may be incurred by each Voter during or in connection with the voting and no reimbursement may be sought from the EBU, the ESC Voting operator, broadcasters or operators transmitting the Live Shows, or their partners.

 

  1. Any votes cast outside of the designated Voting Window(s) will not be taken into account in the determination of the final voting result. The eligibility of any votes is at the sole discretion of the EBU.

 

  1. The EBU reserves the right to discard and/or cancel votes or suspend the voting and/or the Voting Platform if it has reasonable grounds to suspect that fraudulent voting has occurred or that votes have been cast through an abuse, loophole, or bugs in the voting or if it considers there has been any attempt to rig the voting and/or the Voting Platform.

 

  1. The EBU reserves the right to change, cancel or suspend the voting and/or the Voting Platform and/or to change the duration of the Voting Windows and/or to reduce their number at any time at its own discretion without prior notice. The EBU has the right to substitute an alternative voting method at its absolute discretion. In addition, if, for any reason, the Voting Platform fails, the EBU shall be entitled to suspend, withdraw, cancel, or reset the votes or to action a contingency plan at its sole discretion and at any time without any liability.

 

  1. The EBU’s decision in relation to all matters relating to the votes and/or the voting is final.

 

  1. Please note that these Terms and Conditions do not apply for the services provided by third party offers (e.g., video content on YouTube, music downloads on the iTunes store) to which the Voting Platform may link. The Voter acknowledges that the EBU and the ESC Voting operator have not reviewed all of the web sites that are linked to the Voting Platform, and that they have no control over such sites. The EBU and the ESC Voting operator are not responsible for the content of such web sites, any updates or changes to such sites, or the privacy or other practices of such sites, and the fact that the Voting Platform provides such links does not indicate any approval or endorsement of any material contained on any linked site. Accordingly, the EBU and the ESC Voting operator encourage the Voter to become familiar with the terms of use and practices of any linked site. Further, it is up to the Voter to take precautions to ensure that whatever links the Voter selects or software the Voter downloads from such web sites is free of such items as viruses, worms, Trojan horses, defects, date bombs, time bombs and other items of a destructive nature. The Voter acknowledges that the EBU and the ESC Voting operator will not be party to any transaction or contract with a third party that the Voter may enter into.

 

  1. The ESC Voting operator, the EBU and their subcontractors cannot accept any responsibility whatsoever for any technical failure or malfunction or any other problem with the Voting Platform, any online system, server, provider or otherwise which may result in any vote being lost or not properly registered or recorded. The ESC Voting operator, the EBU and their subcontractors shall not be liable to Voters for failure to provide the Voting for any reason whatsoever. All warranties, representations, conditions, or other terms either expressed or implied in relation to these terms and conditions are excluded and limited to the maximum extent permissible by law.

 

  1. The names, images, icons, and logos identifying the ESC Voting operator, the EBU, its members or third parties and their products and services are subject to copyright, design rights and trademarks of the ESC Voting operator, the EBU, its members and/or third parties. Content accessible from the Voting Platform, including but not limited to texts, graphs, images, videos, soundtracks, photos, logos, and icons, shall be protected by intellectual property rights or other rights, and should not be copied, reproduced, distributed, used, adapted, or translated in part or in their entirety without the written authorisation of the EBU.

 

  1. The EBU reserves the right to amend or vary any of these Terms and Conditions and the voting process without prior notice to any Voter. By continuing to participate in the voting, each Voter will be deemed to have accepted the amended and/or varied terms and conditions, which will be posted on the Voting Platform.

 

  1. These Terms and Conditions are governed by the laws of Germany and are applicable to the ESC Rest of the World Voting of the ESC 2024.


Last update - 24 April 2024