This post was originally published on the Filter blog.
There are a few conspiracy theories being thrown around our virtual workplace surrounding Eurovision this year, keep reading to find out what’s been going on.
As we are a remote-first and international team at Filter, we thought it would be fun to get our team involved in a Eurovision sweepstake to celebrate the competition coming to the UK this year.
If you tuned into the live final which took place in Liverpool over the weekend, you will have seen that (SPOILER ALERT) Sweden won the competition for a 7th time. Sweden’s chosen artist Loreen is also the first person to win the contest twice, after originally winning for Sweden back in 2012.
Was Eurovision ‘Rigged’?
After the live final, many people were suspicious that Sweden winning happened to coincide with the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s historical win back in 1974 with “Waterloo”.
Other aspects that are fuelling speculation include technical errors that occurred during the tele-voting process and the fact that most people didn’t enjoy Sweden’s entry this year (“Tattoo” by Loreen).
A Filter Fix-up?
In an interesting twist, the Filter team are now convinced that our very own sweepstakes draw was also rigged.
If you follow us on social media, you will have seen that we recently conducted a live sweepstakes draw with all of our team. During this draw, our CEO Oliver Morrison was given Sweden and our CTO Paul Halfpenny was given Finland.
A few members of the Filter team thought this was exceptionally suspicious, as they were among the favourites to win. As Sweden then went on to win the competition, and Finland came second, this caused a lot of speculation at Filter’s virtual HQ.
Editors note: Technically, I am being paid to write this article so I can neither confirm nor deny the allegations.
If you’d like to listen to all of the Eurovision 2023 entries, you can access a free Spotify playlist here.
A Happy Ending
Although there has been a lot of speculation about both Eurovision and our internal sweepstake competition, the celebrations still have a wholesome conclusion.
The prize for the winner of our internal competition was to choose a charity to make a donation to, on behalf of Filter as a whole.
Oliver Morrison (Filter, CEO) chose to donate to Target Ovarian Cancer who are the only charity to work across all four nations of the UK, working with anyone who has been affected by ovarian cancer.
In all seriousness, we always enjoy giving back to deserving causes and having fun as a team while we do it.