Sinner, Eurovision, and the Italian Renaissances

An interview with an Italian television executive about the power of live entertainment amid a world—and a song contest—that is more fragmented than ever.

VIENNA, Austria — On a long spring-summer sojourn across Europe, my first stop has been a tennis arena currently being used for something else entirely.

The Wiener Stadthalle, home of ATP 500 Vienna each October, is the fourth ATP venue in the last six years (following Rotterdam, Turin, and Basel) to host the Eurovision Song Contest. Eurovision is an event which I have loved for years, even as it grows massively more complicated, entangled, and problematic as issues from the wider world grab hold. Sound familiar, tennis fans?

As my recent interview with outspoken Ukrainian WTA player Oleksandra Oliynykova was wrapping up, I told her I was headed to Eurovision, and she spoke approvingly of how the contest has treated her country, particularly the 2022 decision to expel Russia from the contest.

“Ukraine, in general, has a very good history at Eurovision,” Oliynykova said. “We made the final every time [the only country to have a perfect qualifying record], and many times we were Top 5. We won multiple times. It’s because Ukraine has a very strong tradition in music, a very strong music industry…And yeah, I think that the decision to ban Russia was very strong from Eurovision, and I completely agree with this. Because as I said before, Russia is using every aspect of life as a piece of propaganda. And it’s very good to show, from the civilized world, other countries, this solidarity that we will not accept something like this.

“We don’t want to see this on one of the biggest music platforms. We don’t want to see someone from the country which is absolutely controlled by this horrible regime, which is attacking another country, which is aggressive. And I’m happy that their organization of Eurovision—I don’t know who exactly took this decision—but that these people, they understand that everything Russia is creating right now is to promote propaganda. And I think in no free country should something like this be acceptable.”

Eurovision won praise for their handling of Russia in 2022, but has drawn considerably more scrutiny and ire for their handling of Israeli participation, which has overshadowed the last several years of the contest, and led to five longstanding Eurovision-participant nations—Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and Slovenia—boycotting the Vienna edition this year after a planned vote on Israel’s participation was not held.

I’ll get into that a bit later, but this remains a tennis newsletter, so I want to first attempt as much comparative literature on these topics as I can manage without making it too sweaty.

The tennis tour is wrapping up its run at ATP-WTA 1000 Rome this weekend, where Italian star Jannik Sinner is closing in on becoming just the second Grandmaster by collecting all nine ATP 1000 events. If he completes the task in front of a home crowd, it should be one of the scenes in ATP Tour history.

Italy, spoiled for success lately, also has one of my very favorite entries at this year’s Eurovision, with Sal Da Vinci singing “Per Sempre Sì,”

Sal Da Vinci and his dancers. (Photo by Sarah Louise Bennett/EBU)

To try to connect Italian tennis and Eurovision, I sat down in Vienna with Antonella Di Lazzaro, executive for International Relations and European Affairs for Rai (Radiotelevisione Italiana), the national public broadcaster of Italy, which is airing both of these events this weekend.

And afterwards, a preview of some of the most notable songs in Saturday’s Eurovision final, which begins at 9 pm local time here in Vienna, and 3 pm on the U.S. East Coast, streaming on YouTube and Peacock.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

Similarities on Split Screen

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: We’re here at Eurovision, and Rai is also showing the tennis this week in Italy. How would you compare the role that Eurovision plays on television compared to a big sports event? There are a lot of similar elements: competition with a trophy at the end, participants from many different countries, a scoreboard. Maybe the target audiences are different, but do you see similarities?

Antonella Di Lazzaro, RAI: Well, first of all, let me tell you that we have an event in Italy called the Festival of Sanremo, which we actually call the Italian Super Bowl. The Festival is where we get to choose the Eurovision contestants for Italy.

Between the Festival and the Eurovision, there are many sports events. I think what’s most interesting about sports and music, what they have together, is the fact that they are events, and they manage to bring many people in front of linear TV. They create moments of shared emotions and shared passions, and this is one of the last true elements that differentiate linear TV and public service media from (streaming) platforms or from other outlets. So that’s the main element in common.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: They’re both some of the last remaining monoculture. Everyone’s usually watching different streaming platforms with different TV shows at different times, and it’s much more fragmented. But live sports and Eurovision, those are rare things that are monoculture. And I’d guess Sanremo is monoculture in Italy, too.

Antonella Di Lazzaro, RAI: It is, and actually the KPIs have been rising both for Sanremo and the Eurovision: on linear, on digital, on radio and on the territory. These are events that manage to put different generations in front of the screen, so you can really reach different targets. That’s also where brands and companies come in, because they know that in associating with those events—be it sports, soccer, tennis, Olympic, or being a big cultural ecosystem like Sanremo, they manage to reach the different targets they are after.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: I know you’re not a tennis-specific person, but I’m curious, just from an Italian media perspective, what your thoughts are on Jannik Sinner and what celebrity he’s achieved in Italy. Because we see him within the tennis space, but I’m curious from a general Italian cultural perspective how you would talk about what Jannik Sinner has become.

Antonella Di Lazzaro, RAI: I personally love him, because he is a very peculiar mixture between incredible talent and incredible dedication and incredible humility. So he’s a very atypical Italian in a way, because we are used to be more creative, even in tennis, even in sports. He’s creative, but he’s still very disciplined.

And actually, talking about the Eurovision and Sanremo and Jannik Sinner, the destinies of those three events are somehow interlaced, because we first had the ATP Finals in Turin in 2021, broadcast on Rai, and that was also the year where the Eurovision came back to Italy after many years [when Måneskin won in May 2021].

So we had the ATP Finals at the PalaIsozaki, the venue in Turin. And after six months—in the middle of a terrible pandemic because we were still observing all the pandemic rules—we had our first Eurovision in Italy after so many years, and that was a blast. So, somehow the rising fortunes of the Eurovision among the Italian public in the past, let’s say, 8-10 years, and especially from 2021 with Måneskin onwards, is very interlinked with the ATP Finals coming to Italy and Jannik Sinner rising in the charts and becoming bigger and bigger.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: People talk about this in cultures sometimes, that a country can gain momentum in different areas. Like South Korea, let’s say, which has big success in pop music and also in film, internationally. You sense that, I guess, in a general sense in Italy, that there’s this sort of cultural momentum on a national level across different arenas?

Antonella Di Lazzaro, RAI: There is, there is. Especially in the music arena, I think Festival of Sanremo really changed its strategic positioning in the late 2010s. So starting from 2016, the artistic directors of Sanremo started to recruit a more varied roster of artists, so you got to have trap, hip-hop—many different genres that weren’t necessarily on that stage in the past years. That has influenced the way the Italians looked at the Eurovision. After so many years, they had performers on stage that they really loved and followed.

And that also has influenced the way we looked at sports. Because for instance, tennis has had a total rise in the past five or six years in Italy, because we have talents after many years of maybe being a bit average. We have new talents people feel represented by. So it is a cultural moment.

And it is a cultural moment for the city of Naples. Why am I saying that? Because this year’s contestant at the Eurovision, Sal Da Vinci, is of course from Naples. He represents, as well as many dramas and soap operas and TV productions in Italy, he represents the noble part of Naples. He represents the storytelling. He represents a career made step-by-step, working hard, coming from humble origins and then exploding in his late 50s. And Napoli has a momentum, just as Italy has a moment in many different genres of music and in the entertainment production.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: There’s this ATP event called NextGen for the young players that used to be held in Milan. And it’s coming back to Italy this year. And I don’t think the city has been announced yet, but there’s talk about having it in Naples, as well.

Antonella Di Lazzaro, RAI: Ah, I wasn’t aware.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: I don’t know if it’s official yet, but I’ve heard the talk of that.

But if Sal brings Eurovision back to Italy, do you think it will be in Naples in 2027?

Antonella Di Lazzaro, RAI: Well, Eurovision has very [specific] logistics to choose the city. Because, as you know, it has to be a big enough arena that can contain 12,000 people, and it has to have very high ceilings in order for the cameras and the DOPs to be set. So when we had it in Italy, it was a long process of choosing among different cities proposing themselves and bidding. We can’t necessarily say it will be in Naples, but Naples is having its moment.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Can I ask about Sal? I did something different this year intentionally, and I didn’t watch or listen to any of the 35 countries before this week. So I was getting first impressions on Monday night during the jury show, and when Sal came on, I was immediately delighted and enchanted by him.

Especially having seen all the songs in this field where I think so many of the songs are very intense and there’s a lot of darkness, he’s something completely different. He’s very joyful, he is very bright, and it’s this very clear, happy love story, a wedding story that everyone can recognize. And at the same time it’s fun, with little tricks like the flag and everything else on stage. How did it come together to make this package? I think it really stands out.

Antonella Di Lazzaro, RAI: I quite like your angle, because Sal is a mature artist in the sense that he started performing on stage when he was seven years old. He’s now nearly 57, so in September it will mark his 50th year of career on the stage. He started performing with his dad, who was also a singer and an actor from Naples.

I quite like the angle that you are expressing, that it’s a joyful song, because I think it’s being appreciated more by foreign people abroad than in Italy. When Sal won Sanremo, part of Italy was totally supporting it, and part of Italy was a little bit snobby towards him, because he represents—honestly and truly and consistently—his city. He represents its roots, its musical roots, that are very exceptional. But Italians somehow link him to the most [stereotyped] culture that we have, and I think that’s wrong.

Italians don’t want to be perceived abroad as this neomelodic songs—you know, pizza, mandolino, stereotypical. And they are completely wrong, because he has a mastery and an expertise of music which is exceptional, and I think what foreign people have really picked up is the intention. He has a true, honest intention. And what he sings about, love and family, he practices. So he’s not preaching, he’s practicing. He’s practicing in his life, so his storytelling and authenticity support each other. That’s, I think, the recipe for success.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Eurovision has gained more profile this year, especially internationally, with the controversies around it. It was front page news in the New York Times this week. How much does that affect your side, in terms of preparations, both in terms of preparing the artists and everyone to be able to answer questions and what the politics are? I know lots of national broadcasters in recent years have had protests at their station buildings in their home countries. And this conversation is sports too, right? How much of sports is ever actually separate from politics, how much everything is always connected? Do you think there can ever be a separate world inside something like a Eurovision bubble, or is it connected to everything?

Antonella Di Lazzaro, RAI: We cannot deny that the Eurovision, it is also a geopolitical platform. You can see it if you follow the story of the Eurovision in Europe throughout the years, according to the countries that joined or left, you can really appreciate what the geopolitical situation is like.

Us, the EBU and the ORF—the broadcaster from Austria—have been revising the voting system in order for it to be more transparent, and they’ve made a point of which countries to include in the Eurovision and how the voting system would have been. So we followed the path that was decided centrally at European level and by the broadcaster that has the prerogative of, editorially and content-wise, choosing what to bring on stage.

It wasn’t difficult for us to prepare our teams and our presenters—we also have ancillary shows so it’s not our artists only, but also our presenters. Because, as I said, Sal is a very mature man, and he has a very clear and distinctive vision of the world. So whenever he was asked about those questions, he replied that he was here to represent the universal power of music, and to represent and talk and story-tell universal values. So it was a very honest, sincere, and effective answer.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: The Eurovision “United by Music” slogan, some people say it sarcastically when they talk about the contest and its controversies now, but it still can be very true for some people at the same time. As embattled as this contest is, for a lot of people it still could have the intended meaning.

Antonella Di Lazzaro, RAI: Exactly, and everyone lives and feels it in a different way, so—

[At this point, in a typical Eurovision moment, we were interrupted by a member of the Greek hype team who was giving out promotional knit hats, like their performer wears on stage, and Di Lazzaro was eager for one.]

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Do you have any other favorites besides Italy? Greece, I’d guess?

Antonella Di Lazzaro, RAI: Greece, Greece, Greece, absolutely. There are quite a few articulated and nice songs this year. Norway. Yesterday Bulgaria performed.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Bulgaria I think is really cool.

Antonella Di Lazzaro, RAI: I think it’s really cool. Australia is a nice song. I know Finland is a favorite, but I wouldn’t rank it among my top three.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Me neither, to be honest. Again, because it’s kind of the opposite of Italy for me, in some ways. The Finnish one is all so intense, with fire, and darkness. And for me this year, I gravitate towards the lighter Italian stuff. This year, especially.

What to Watch for in the 2026 Eurovision Final

1. Denmark: “Før vi går hjem” by Søren Torpegaard Lund

Denmark opens the show with one of my favorite entries of this year, and I feel like it’s a shame that it starts off the show because its quality would really shine more if it followed one of the less impressive efforts.

But Eurovision likes putting something credible and attractive up first to hook viewers, and I think Denmark does that, if maybe without being as family-friendly as the contest might want for the act at the earliest hour.

If I were a juror, I think this is what I’d pick. For me, it has the night’s best combination of both showmanship, songwriting, and musicality.

3. Israel: “Michelle” by Noam Bettan

There’s nothing particularly notable about Israel’s song except that it’s Israel’s, which makes it completely preeminent in any assessment of how tonight goes. Israel’s continued presence both takes up all the oxygen and has everyone in the organizing committee—and many fans—holding their breath. Israel simply staying in the field already caused five countries to drop out; if they win and get the traditional honor of hosting the next year’s event, the number of countries who show up could be half of this year’s field of 35.

Israel’s song is fine, but it’s not really about that with them in this era, since their votes come from an outsized bloc of supporters who are motivated to turn out in force to send a message to a massive audience of Europeans for the cheap price of ~1 euro per vote.

In Spain last year, as the New York Times reported from leaked information this week, the Israeli tally utterly dwarfed anything else in the large country. Every other song was fairly level with each other, and then there was Israel.

Because of Eurovision’s lack of transparency about vote totals, it’s impossible to know if this result was an outlier or not, but Israel won last year’s televote handily.

Eurovision was invented in 1956 as a peacetime contest, and having a country at war(s) in the field, with the current voting system, puts a magnet next to the compass that I think makes the spirit of the competition nearly completely lost.

It’s also just a lot of disruption. As I entered the stadium for the Saturday rehearsal show a few hours ago, I waited well over an hour to get through the security line, and then got the longest security pat-down of my life. (It was long enough that the guard checking my every crevice started a conversation with me, asking if I’d been to Vienna, what I’d seen so far, and so on.) I am all for safety, but I also don’t think the risk would be considered so high if there wasn’t something so divisive happening on the stage, guised as a standard radio-friendly pop song.

Lots of people have boycotted this year’s Eurovision, in small or big ways, since the EBU declined to hold a vote on their status late last year, and I don’t blame them: in many ways, Eurovision was overrun as a tool for Israel’s government in recent years. That tide seems to have ebbed slightly, but there’s still a lot of muck that it feels like you have to wade through at times to remain part of this space.

But I also don’t think that boycotting what is essentially an election is a way to stop the candidate you don’t want to see win, and I still think that Eurovision has something about it worth saving. The job, once again, will likely fall to the juries, which have given Israel nowhere near as much support as the motivated televoters in recent years. There’s no overwhelming favorite to win this year—which means that Israel and its high floor are very much contenders—but there does seem to be one option folks are coalescing around (more on them later).

6. Greece: “Ferto” by Akylas

Eurovision is full of contrasts, so I whiplash from serious geopolitics to a lil’ Greek guy in furry orange boots who has delighted his home country and much of Europe.

Akylas is singing about conspicuous consumption, only to turn heartfelt about his mother at the bridge. It’s a bit Joost-coded in that way, albeit with a much gentler touch. This was originally considered the televote favorite until people came to their senses and realized that Israel is almost certainly taking it once more.

8. Australia: “Eclipse” by Delta Goodrem

Because she never dented the U.S. charts during her heyday I have a pretty big blind spot for Delta Goodrem, who is by far the most established star in this year’s contest. But when I first saw her in the rehearsals, the caliber of her voice really cut through the field. There’s just a tone and a control here that makes the rest sound amateurish.

Where Goodrem is less impressive is her song, which is fairly generic and not very catchy, but she’s throwing all the Eurovision stops at the staging, ending on a big rising platform that was previously used on tour by Beyoncé. This is a popular contender to do well, but I still just think Europeans are almost always reluctant to vote for a country that is so clearly not in Europe.

12. Bulgaria: “Bangaranga” by Dara

Delta Goodrem sounds like a polished pro, but the most professional-looking performance, I think, is Bulgaria’s, which has a high-concept staging and really cool camera work which elevates a pretty generic Eurovision song to something that feels VMAs-worthy. I think this one could do really well with both juries and the public; a definite dark horse.

13. Croatia: “Andromeda” by Lelek

When I first watched rehearsals of the first semifinal, the word that kept coming to my head as a theme for the evening was an unexpected one: Catholic. This is a haunting performance that helps to know historical context on: the crosses drawn on their faces refer to tattoos women in what’s now Bosnia used centuries ago to mark themselves as Catholics, so as to deter possible kidnappings from the Ottoman Empire.

15. France: “Regarde!” by Monroe

If you only watch part of this year’s Eurovision, make it the run of three songs that start with France. French-American singer Monroe is one of the strongest vocalists in the contest, and it shocked me to learn that she’s only 17. Having a youthful operatic talent feels like a possible remedy for whatever Timothée Chalamet was decrying, and I think that if Europe is in the mood for her style, this one has a huge upside.

16. Moldova: “Viva, Moldova!” by Satoshi

Trying something new—and feeling ambivalent about the contest overall—I arrived to Vienna without having heard or seen almost all of the songs. I was immediately jolted to attention, and then delight, when Moldova opened the first semifinal with a tribute to themselves, as only Moldova could.

It’s raucous, it’s ridiculous, it’s Eurovision. If I was a fan at home voting, this would be getting my points, for sure.

17. Finland: “Liekinheitin” by Linda Lampenius x Pete Parkkonen

This year’s Finnish entry represents a real paradigm shift for Eurovision: the country got special permission for Linda Lampenius’ violin to be mic’d up and live for the audience to hear, bending decades-old rules about only using pre-recorded instrument tracks.

It’s tough for me to compute how effective it is, because I am so unaccustomed to assessing an entry based on the quality of an instrumental. Will voters like it? Or will they not respond? I really don’t know.

Bettors have responded though, bunching around Finland with enough clumping to give them roughly 40% odds of winning.

A Eurovision win would add to the 56-year-old Lampenius’ absurdly Gumpeseque life, as you can see by the crowded “Other careers” section of her Wikipedia page, as my pal Danna flagged.

She was on the Helsinki City Council, had a cider brand, and raced rally cars. In one tennis connection, she modeled for Björn Borg’s eponymous clothing line.

22. Italy: “Per sempre sì” by Sal Da Vinci

In case you didn’t watch it upthread, the Italian entry really does delight me. It’s pretty cool to hear a song for the first time and immediately know that it’s going to be played at weddings for generations to come, and the Italians hit the nail squarely on the head with literal staging which conveys the message to any language.

Italy is a fixture of the Eurovision Top 10, and if this were a normal year without mid-war Israel skewing things, I’d like their odds to win a televote with this. But if juries like it, I think it can still finish very high.

Thanks for reading Bounces and thanks for indulging this annual Eurovision fare here! -Ben