Israel warned by EBU over ad campaign calling to support Noam Bettan at Eurovision |
The European Broadcasting Union issued a letter of warning to the Kan public broadcaster over an online campaign calling for fans to vote for singer Noam Bettan, amid new voting rules seeking to limit third-party campaigns.
In a statement issued Saturday, Martin Green, the director of the Eurovision, said that after seeing online videos featuring Bettan, “within 20 minutes we had contacted the KAN delegation to ask them to immediately stop any distribution of the videos and remove them from any platforms where they had been published. They immediately acted to do this.”
In response to a query to The Times of Israel, Kan responded only that “the Kan public broadcaster is following all of the rules of the competition.”
A source close to the delegation pointed out that such advertising campaigns are also being run this year by other contestants, including those from Malta and Romania.
The videos in question featured Bettan, in a variety of different languages, calling on fans to vote 10 times for the Israeli song. They had been flagged by a number of Eurovision fan sites as potentially violating the new rules agreed to by EBU members last year in a vote that cleared the way for Israel’s participation.
The rules in question “discourage disproportionate promotion campaigns… particularly when undertaken or supported by third parties, including governments or governmental agencies.” In addition, the rules state that “participating broadcasters and artists are not permitted to actively engage in, facilitate or contribute to promotional campaigns by third parties that could influence the voting outcome.”
Israel’s Eurovision 2026 singer is doing........