esctoday.com has asked both the team at eurovision.tv and YLE for an explanation as to why the international fans of the Eurovision Song Contest were denied the chance to watch the promised webcast today. The televised draw had been advertised and talked about back at the press conference in Bucharest in early December.

Problems for EBU & YLE
Although no official word from the EBU or YLE has been given about why the webcast did not work, a simple examinanation shows that the link to the media player was dead. This may indicate either a capacity problem,technical or communications oversight.

Problems for esctoday.com
With the webcast down, the additional pressure placed on esctoday.com caused our own servers to overload, and we would like to apologise to our readers who were unable to access this website for approximately 20 minutes.

Although we planned for capacity issues today, and set in motion a back-up plan to protect the website from overloading, the demand was simply too strong. We have put in place a system which disables the reactions section of the site when we near capacity in order to allow as many readers as possible to access the news, but that was not enough this afternoon.

We are trying to purchase an additional server and enhance bandwidth, but we are a fans' site and not profit making. Because we refuse to accept payments from broadcasters or participating acts, we rely entirely on a small revenue through advertising and purchases made with partner sites via links from our site. Our only other income source is reader donations and financial support from the team that runs esctoday.com. Any donations received are invested in the running of the site, and put to use in bringing our readers all the news from the world of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Donations can be made using paypal via the button near the top of our homepage. Whilst we don't like asking for payments, and we will always ensure that the website remains free to use and free to all, we do need to ensure that we can keep the site online throughout the Eurovision season and all help is thoroughly appreciated.