The “scandal” broke around 23:10 CET as the official EBU website for the Eurovision Song Contest published by error an article saying “Amber Takes Control in Malta” announcing her as the winner of the Maltese National Final 2013. The oikotimes.com immediately contacted EBU and we received the following answer:
“It was an error, of course we have no knowledge of who will win in Malta and it was an error as we always prepare articles to be on time with the results”.
OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON EUROVISION.TV
We also want to apologise for publishing an article earlier where we announced the winner of the show prematurely. Of course we have no knowledge who wins a national selection before it happens on TV! But to give you the results faster, we prepare articles for all the possible winners. This time one of the prepared articles got published by accident. In the end we had another winner after all! So, sorry, but unfortunately we cannot predict the future…
UPDATE
The singer for whom the whole scandal took place, Amber, replied on social media regarding the mistake. “Someone else’s mistake suffered by us”. The singer who has nothing to do with the simple and innocent mistake made by the EBU team suffered from complaints backstage while waiting the official results of MESC 2013. There were verbal attacks towards her and her team and we agree this was not fair to her at all. After all Amber’s job was simply to sing and perform on stage. We truly hope this story ends here.