The Scoop

Arisa to opt out of Eurovision?

With just two days until the start of the 2016 Festival di Sanremo, the Eurovision community is looking forward to what RAI is planning to do with the Eurovision Song Contest 2016. Like last year, the winner will be offered the chance of going to Eurovision, but the winner is in fact allowed to turn it down. According to the website Il Fatto Quotidiano, one of the favourites for the Sanremo victory has said she does not want to do Eurovision…
Arisa, the winner of the 2014 edition of the Sanremo festival, has openly said she hopes she doesn’t win. Doing Eurovision would not be preferable for her. As a reason for her refusal to do Eurovision, Arisa stated that the extra tasks and commitments were not made for her. She feels she doesn’t want to commit to doing all of that and would therefore opt out of doing Eurovision.  Her song Guardando Il Cielo is however considered a favourite for Sanremo, but as far as we can now see, Arisa would probably turn down Eurovision.
So what’ll happen in case Arisa does indeed win Sanremo and also turn down Eurovision? In that case, RAI will internally select one of the Sanremo artists to represent them in Stockholm. That could be any of the artists participating in the Campioni section. The song representing Italy could then be either the Sanremo song or a newly written song especially for Eurovision.
Alongside Arisa, the major favourites for the Festival di Sanremo 2016 are Annalisa and the duet made up of Deborah Iurato and Giovanni Caccamo.
Update: Special thanks go out to Julio Andre, Adam Scott and Gianluca Valente of escChat.com for their help on this article.

Back to top button