OlympicIRL

A User may nominate any Artist to represent their country providing that the Artist is either born in that country or has more association with that country than their place of birth. A Band consisting of members from different countries may be chosen to represent a Country if at least 50% of the band was born in that Country or if that band has more association with that Country than another. Songs must be original to the Artist selected or at least original to that country. Songs which competed at the Eurovision Song Contest are excluded from this competition. If two or more Users from the same Country disagree about which Song should represent them then they will have to find a compromise or failing such compromise, a Random Draw will be conducted to decide which of those Songs will represent their Country in the Contest. Only users from a particular country can choose a song to represent that country. Users can use any National Selection process they wish in order to find a representative. Songs will be Automatically Disqualified from the Final if a User from that Country does not participate in the Final Voting Process. This is to ensure that as much fairness can be attached to the Contest as possible and each country has an equal chance. If in the unlikely event that more than 25 countries will participate in the Contest, then a Semi-Final(s) will take place to ensure that only 25 Songs are represented in the Final. Voting will follow the same format as that used in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Rule 1: Eligibility of Songs: 1(a) All Songs released either as a Single or an Original Song featured on an Album for the first time since the 1st January 2013. 1(b) All Songs must be Original to either the Artist(s) or the Nation for which they are participating. 1(c) Songs which competed at the Eurovision Song Contest or other such International Song Contests are excluded from competing in our Contests. Equally, Songs which competed in previous editions of our Contests are excluded from future editions. Rule 2: Eligibility of Artists: 2(a) The chosen Artist(s) must be from the Nation which they are participating for or they should have more or equal association with that Nation. 2(b) In the case of Bands or Groups, at least 50% of the Band must be from the Nation which they are participating for or they should have more or equal association with that Nation. 2(c) For the purposes of these Contests and to avoid unecessary confusion, we will use the same criteria for issues of nationality as that used by the International Olympic Committee. For example, artists from Northern Ireland may be chosen to represent either Ireland or the United Kingdom. In such circumstances there should be private communication between both national juries before selecting the artists in question and it will be a matter solely for those national juries concerned. Rule 3: Contest Format: 3(a) All editions of the Song Contests will be a straight-forward Grand Final format (without Semi-Finals or Preliminaries). The only exception will be in the event that there are 40 or more Nations registering to participate in the Contest. 3(b) In the scenario of 40 or more Nations participating in the Contest , it will be at the discretion of the Host Nation whether or not to conduct a straight-forward Grand-Final or whether to introduce a Semi-Final system (consisting of 2 Semi-Finals with an even number of Nations in each where possible. There will be a Random Draw to determine which Songs participate in which Semi-Finals). 3(c) In the case of Semi-Finals or Preliminaries, all Nations will have to participate in these stages (there will be no automatic qualifiers for the Grand Final) and at least 28 Nations must be advanced to the Grand Final event. Rule 4: Scoring System and Tie-Break Scenarios: 4(a) The Scoring system will always use the same format as that used in the Eurovision Song Contest (points will be awarded as follows...in an ascending manner from 1 to 8 points, 10 points and concluding with a maximum award of 12 points for the song of 1st preference). Points 9 and 11 will only be made available for distribution in the event of 28 or more Nations participating in the Contest Grand Final. 4(b) In the event of a tie between 2 or more Songs in the overall scoreboard after all the votes have been announced, they shall be separated by the following criteria (in order of precedence): The Song that will be declared the winner of the tie-break situation shall be.... (i) The Song which received points from the greatest number of National Juries. (ii) If there is still a tie, after (i) then then Song which received the greatest number of 12 Points. (iii) If there is still a tie after (i) and (ii) then the Song which received the greatest number of 11 Points, and proceeding to calculate the total number of 10 points, 9 points, 8 points and so on until the tie-break is resolved. (iv) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii) and (iii) then the Song which received points from the greatest number of individual jury members excluding the jury members from the Nations involved in the tie-break situation. If the Songs remain tied after (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) then the songs in question will be considered to have tied for that position and will not be separated by any other means in the Final Ranking. Rule 5: Confirmation of Participation: 5(a) In order to participate in the Song Contest, Nations must Register their interest to compete within the required specified time-frame. This window must be open for at least 28 days in order to allow enough time for Nations to makes their interest known. 5(b) Confirmation of Participation will be subject to the following rules: (i) All Nations must take part in the Voting process in order to participate in the Song Contest. Any Nations that have Registered to compete and submit an entry but do not Vote will be automatically disqualified. (ii) If there is corruption discovered in any way during the Voting process then the Nation of the offending national jury member(s) will be under investigation with a view to potential disqualification. (iii) If corruption by a National Jury is discovered after the competition, then that Nation may be disqualified from future contests and their performance at the competition in question may be placed under review or even annulled. 5(c) Only Nations that have Registered a song/artist to participate in the Song Contest may take part in the official Voting process. Rule 6: Running Order of National Jury Voting: 6(a) A Random Draw must always be conducted in order to produce the Order of National Jury Voting during the Grand Final. 6(b) This Random Draw must be made available for other users to watch live so that it can be verified. 6(c) The Order in which National Juries will vote must never be changed from the result of the Order created by the Random Draw except in the following circumstances: (i) If a National Jury is drawn to announce their Votes outside of reasonable local hours in that Nation (reasonable hours for the purposes of these Contests are determined as anytime between 09:30am - 22:30pm local time in the Nation in question), then that National Jury is eligble to ask for a Swap in the Order of their Voting. (ii) Swaps with always be sought firstly with other Nations that are eligible for a Swap due to awkward voting hours. If there is more than one Nation eligible for Swaps, the process will always begin with the first eligible Nation according to the result of the already conducted Random Draw which was used to determine the Order of National Jury Voting. If there are no obvious Swaps then a Random Draw should be conducted to decide which Nation will complete the Swap. The Nations placed in the final 5 of the original jury order will be excluded from this random draw as their position will be secure unless they are eligible for a Swap. Swaps with Nations that would result in further Swaps needed will not be permitted and thus those Nations are also excluded from that Random Draw. Rule 7: National Jury Voting System: 7(a) National Juries can consist of any number of members (one or more) providing that those members are from that Nation. 7(b) Voting must be carried out in secret (Votes sent by Private Message and not shared between Users) and must only be made public when called upon to do so by the Host during the Grand Final. 7(c) Votes from National Juries consisting of more than one member will have their Votes combined so that they form a single set of results. This set of results will then become the official National Jury Vote of that Nation. If there is a tie between one or more Songs after the jury members have completed their votes then the following tie-break rules will be used (in order of precedence): The Song that will be declared the winner of the tie-break situation shall be.... (i) The Song which received points from the greatest number of Jury members. (ii) If there is still a tie, after (i) then then Song which received the greatest number of 12 Points. (iii) If there is still a tie after (i) and (ii) then the Song which received the greatest number of 11 Points, and proceeding to calculate the total number of 10 points, 9 points, 8 points and so on until the tie-break is resolved. (iv) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii) and (iii) then the Votes shall be analysed to see if there is a "free jury member(s)" remaining who has yet to make their preference known. A "free jury member" is a member of the National Jury in question that did not award any points to any of the Songs that are involved in the tie-break situation. As a result, they have not yet made clear which of the tied Songs they prefer and as such they will be asked to break the tie-break situation by directly choosing which Song they prefer. This tie-break rule can only come into effect if there are 3 or more members on a National Jury and can only be used if there is a free jury member after Voting. There may be more than one "free jury member" and all such members must be asked to break the tie-break situation. (v) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) then a Random Draw will determine which Song wins the tie-break situation. This Random Draw will take place in secret and will be made available to witness live by the National Jury in question and the Host. 7(d) National Juries are excluded from Voting for their own Nation. Rule 8: Hosting of Song Contests: 8(a) The Hosting duties of the Song Contest will be awarded to the Winning Nation of the previous edition of that Contest. 8(b) If the previous Winning Nation cannot undertake the Hosting duties for any reason, then the Hosting duties will then be awarded to the Runner-Up of the previous edition of the Contest. If they too cannot undertake the responsibility then the process of finding a Host will continue to work through those final rankings of the previous edition until a Host is found. 8(c) If a Host still could not be found then all Nations will be invited if they wish to make their interest known and a Host will be selected from those interested parties. 8(d) Upon carrying out the Hosting duties, the Host must allow a minimum total of 28 days for Nations to register their interest to participate in the contest and to select their representatives. 8(e) The Host must allow a minimum total of 10 days for National Juries to Vote during the specified Voting window. 8(f) The Host must Vote in secret and send those Votes to a neutral party before opening up the Voting window for all National Juries. This is to ensure that the Votes of the Host are not influenced by the Votes of other National Juries. 8(g) In the spirit of fair play the Host is forbidden from sharing confidential information with other Users. 8(h) The Host must abide by the same rules which govern the actions of all other Users and Song Contest Participants.

Rule 1: Eligibility of Songs: 1(a) There are NO restrictions in terms of period or genre. Songs from any year are permitted in the Open Contest edition. 1(b) All Songs must be Original to either the Artist(s) or the Nation for which they are participating. 1(c) Songs which competed at the Eurovision Song Contest or other such International Song Contests are excluded from competing in our Contests. Equally, Songs which competed in previous editions of our Contests are excluded from future editions. Rule 2: Eligibility of Artists: 2(a) The chosen Artist(s) must be from the Nation which they are participating for or they should have more or equal association with that Nation. 2(b) In the case of Bands or Groups, at least 50% of the Band must be from the Nation which they are participating for or they should have more or equal association with that Nation. 2(c) For the purposes of these Contests and to avoid unecessary confusion, we will use the same criteria for issues of nationality as that used by the International Olympic Committee. For example, artists from Northern Ireland may be chosen to represent either Ireland or the United Kingdom. In such circumstances there should be private communication between both national juries before selecting the artists in question and it will be a matter solely for those national juries concerned. Rule 3: Contest Format: 3(a) All editions of the Song Contests will be a straight-forward Grand Final format (without Semi-Finals or Preliminaries). The only exception will be in the event that there are 40 or more Nations registering to participate in the Contest. 3(b) In the scenario of 40 or more Nations participating in the Contest , it will be at the discretion of the Host Nation whether or not to conduct a straight-forward Grand-Final or whether to introduce a Semi-Final system (consisting of 2 Semi-Finals with an even number of Nations in each where possible. There will be a Random Draw to determine which Songs participate in which Semi-Finals). 3(c) In the case of Semi-Finals or Preliminaries, all Nations will have to participate in these stages (there will be no automatic qualifiers for the Grand Final) and at least 28 Nations must be advanced to the Grand Final event. Rule 4: Scoring System and Tie-Break Scenarios: 4(a) The Scoring system will always use the same format as that used in the Eurovision Song Contest (points will be awarded as follows....12 points given to song of 1st preference, 11 points to 2nd preference, 10 points for 3rd prefrence and so on with the points value decreasing by one point each time with 1 point being awarded to the song of 12th preference. 4(b) In the event of a tie between 2 or more Songs in the overall scoreboard after all the votes have been announced, they shall be separated by the following criteria (in order of precedence): The Song that will be declared the winner of the tie-break situation shall be.... (i) The Song which received points from the greatest number of National Juries. (ii) If there is still a tie, after (i) then then Song which received the greatest number of 12 Points. (iii) If there is still a tie after (i) and (ii) then the Song which received the greatest number of 11 Points, and proceeding to calculate the total number of 10 points, 9 points, 8 points and so on until the tie-break is resolved. (iv) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii) and (iii) then the Song which received points from the greatest number of individual jury members excluding the jury members from the Nations involved in the tie-break situation. If the Songs remain tied after (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) then the songs in question will be considered to have tied for that position and will not be separated by any other means in the Final Ranking. Rule 5: Confirmation of Participation: 5(a) In order to participate in the Song Contest, Nations must Register their interest to compete within the required specified time-frame. This window must be open for at least 20 days in order to allow enough time for Nations to makes their interest known. 5(b) Confirmation of Participation will be subject to the following rules: (i) All Nations must take part in the Voting process in order to participate in the Song Contest. Any Nations that have Registered to compete and submit an entry but do not Vote will be automatically disqualified. (ii) If there is corruption discovered in any way during the Voting process then the Nation of the offending national jury member(s) will be under investigation with a view to potential disqualification. (iii) If corruption by a National Jury is discovered after the competition, then that Nation may be disqualified from future contests and their performance at the competition in question may be placed under review or even annulled. 5(c) Only Nations that have Registered a song/artist to participate in the Song Contest may take part in the official Voting process. Rule 6: Running Order of National Jury Voting: 6(a) A Random Draw must always be conducted in order to produce the Order of National Jury Voting during the Grand Final. 6(b) This Random Draw must be made available for other users to watch live so that it can be verified. 6(c) The Order in which National Juries will vote must never be changed from the result of the Order created by the Random Draw except in the following circumstances: (i) If a National Jury is drawn to announce their Votes outside of reasonable local hours in that Nation (reasonable hours for the purposes of these Contests are determined as anytime between 09:30am - 22:30pm local time in the Nation in question), then that National Jury is eligble to ask for a Swap in the Order of their Voting. (ii) Swaps will always be sought firstly with other Nations that are eligible for a Swap due to awkward voting hours. If there is more than one Nation eligible for Swaps, the process will always begin with the first eligible Nation according to the result of the already conducted Random Draw which was used to determine the Order of National Jury Voting. If there are no obvious Swaps then a Random Draw should be conducted to decide which Nation will complete the Swap. The Nations placed in the final 5 of the original jury order will be excluded from this random draw as their position will be secure unless they are eligible for a Swap. Swaps with Nations that would result in further Swaps needed will not be permitted and thus those Nations are also excluded from that Random Draw. Rule 7: National Jury Voting System: 7(a) National Juries can consist of any number of members (one or more) providing that those members are from that Nation. 7(b) Voting must be carried out in secret (Votes sent by Private Message and not shared between Users) and must only be made public when called upon to do so by the Host during the Grand Final. 7(c) Votes from National Juries consisting of more than one member will have their Votes combined so that they form a single set of results. This set of results will then become the official National Jury Vote of that Nation. If there is a tie between one or more Songs after the jury members have completed their votes then the following tie-break rules will be used (in order of precedence): The Song that will be declared the winner of the tie-break situation shall be.... (i) The Song which received points from the greatest number of Jury members. (ii) If there is still a tie, after (i) then then Song which received the greatest number of 12 Points. (iii) If there is still a tie after (i) and (ii) then the Song which received the greatest number of 11 Points, and proceeding to calculate the total number of 10 points, 9 points, 8 points and so on until the tie-break is resolved. (iv) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii) and (iii) then the Votes shall be analysed to see if there is a "free jury member(s)" remaining who has yet to make their preference known. A "free jury member" is a member of the National Jury in question that did not award any points to any of the Songs that are involved in the tie-break situation. As a result, they have not yet made clear which of the tied Songs they prefer and as such they will be asked to break the tie-break situation by directly choosing which Song they prefer. This tie-break rule can only come into effect if there are 3 or more members on a National Jury and can only be used if there is a free jury member after Voting. There may be more than one "free jury member" and all such members must be asked to break the tie-break situation. (v) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) then a Random Draw will determine which Song wins the tie-break situation. This Random Draw will take place in secret and will be made available to witness live by the National Jury in question and the Host. 7(d) National Juries are excluded from Voting for their own Nation. Rule 8: Hosting of Song Contests: 8(a) The Hosting duties of the Song Contest will be awarded to the Winning Nation of the previous edition of that Contest. 8(b) If the previous Winning Nation cannot undertake the Hosting duties for any reason, then the Hosting duties will then be awarded to the Runner-Up of the previous edition of the Contest. If they too cannot undertake the responsibility then the process of finding a Host will continue to work through those final rankings of the previous edition until a Host is found. 8(c) If a Host still could not be found then all Nations will be invited if they wish to make their interest known and a Host will be selected from those interested parties. 8(d) Upon carrying out the Hosting duties, the Host must allow a minimum total of 20 days for Nations to register their interest to participate in the contest and to select their representatives. 8(e) The Host must allow a minimum total of 10 days for National Juries to Vote during the specified Voting window. 8(f) The Host must Vote in secret and send those Votes to a neutral party before opening up the Voting window for all National Juries. This is to ensure that the Votes of the Host are not influenced by the Votes of other National Juries. 8(g) In the spirit of fair play the Host is forbidden from sharing confidential information with other Users. 8(h) The Host must abide by the same rules which govern the actions of all other Users and Song Contest Participants.

Rule 1: Eligibility of Songs: 1(a) All Songs released either as a Single or an Original Song featured on an Album for the first time since the 1st January 2014. 1(b) All Songs must be Original to either the Artist(s) or the Nation for which they are participating. 1(c) Songs which competed at the Eurovision Song Contest or other such International Song Contests are excluded from competing in our Contests. Equally, Songs which competed in previous editions of our Contests are excluded from future editions. Rule 2: Eligibility of Artists: 2(a) The chosen Artist(s) must be from the Nation which they are participating for or they should have more or equal association with that Nation. 2(b) In the case of Bands or Groups, at least 50% of the Band must be from the Nation which they are participating for or they should have more or equal association with that Nation. 2(c) For the purposes of these Contests and to avoid unecessary confusion, we will use the same criteria for issues of nationality as that used by the International Olympic Committee. For example, artists from Northern Ireland may be chosen to represent either Ireland or the United Kingdom. In such circumstances there should be private communication between both national juries before selecting the artists in question and it will be a matter solely for those national juries concerned. Rule 3: Contest Format: 3(a) All editions of the Song Contests will be a straight-forward Grand Final format (without Semi-Finals or Preliminaries). The only exception will be in the event that there are 40 or more Nations registering to participate in the Contest. 3(b) In the scenario of 40 or more Nations participating in the Contest , it will be at the discretion of the Host Nation whether or not to conduct a straight-forward Grand-Final or whether to introduce a Semi-Final system (consisting of 2 Semi-Finals with an even number of Nations in each where possible. There will be a Random Draw to determine which Songs participate in which Semi-Finals). 3(c) In the case of Semi-Finals or Preliminaries, all Nations will have to participate in these stages (there will be no automatic qualifiers for the Grand Final) and at least 28 Nations must be advanced to the Grand Final event. Rule 4: Scoring System and Tie-Break Scenarios: 4(a) The Scoring system will always use the same format as that used in the Eurovision Song Contest (points will be awarded as follows....12 points given to song of 1st preference, 11 points to 2nd preference, 10 points for 3rd prefrence and so on with the points value decreasing by one point each time with 1 point being awarded to the song of 12th preference. 4(b) In the event of a tie between 2 or more Songs in the overall scoreboard after all the votes have been announced, they shall be separated by the following criteria (in order of precedence): The Song that will be declared the winner of the tie-break situation shall be.... (i) The Song which received points from the greatest number of National Juries. (ii) If there is still a tie, after (i) then then Song which received the greatest number of 12 Points. (iii) If there is still a tie after (i) and (ii) then the Song which received the greatest number of 11 Points, and proceeding to calculate the total number of 10 points, 9 points, 8 points and so on until the tie-break is resolved. (iv) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii) and (iii) then the Song which received points from the greatest number of individual jury members excluding the jury members from the Nations involved in the tie-break situation. If the Songs remain tied after (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) then the songs in question will be considered to have tied for that position and will not be separated by any other means in the Final Ranking. Rule 5: Confirmation of Participation: 5(a) In order to participate in the Song Contest, Nations must Register their interest to compete within the required specified time-frame. This window must be open for at least 20 days in order to allow enough time for Nations to makes their interest known. 5(b) Confirmation of Participation will be subject to the following rules: (i) All Nations must take part in the Voting process in order to participate in the Song Contest. Any Nations that have Registered to compete and submit an entry but do not Vote will be automatically disqualified. (ii) If there is corruption discovered in any way during the Voting process then the Nation of the offending national jury member(s) will be under investigation with a view to potential disqualification. (iii) If corruption by a National Jury is discovered after the competition, then that Nation may be disqualified from future contests and their performance at the competition in question may be placed under review or even annulled. 5(c) Only Nations that have Registered a song/artist to participate in the Song Contest may take part in the official Voting process. Rule 6: Running Order of National Jury Voting: 6(a) A Random Draw must always be conducted in order to produce the Order of National Jury Voting during the Grand Final. 6(b) This Random Draw must be made available for other users to watch live so that it can be verified. 6(c) The Order in which National Juries will vote must never be changed from the result of the Order created by the Random Draw except in the following circumstances: (i) If a National Jury is drawn to announce their Votes outside of reasonable local hours in that Nation (reasonable hours for the purposes of these Contests are determined as anytime between 09:30am - 22:30pm local time in the Nation in question), then that National Jury is eligble to ask for a Swap in the Order of their Voting. (ii) Swaps will always be sought firstly with other Nations that are eligible for a Swap due to awkward voting hours. If there is more than one Nation eligible for Swaps, the process will always begin with the first eligible Nation according to the result of the already conducted Random Draw which was used to determine the Order of National Jury Voting. If there are no obvious Swaps then a Random Draw should beconducted to decide which Nation will complete the Swap. The Nations placed in the final 5 of the original jury order will be excluded from this random draw as their position will be secure unless they are eligible for a Swap. Swaps with Nations that would result in further Swaps needed will not be permitted and thus those Nations are also excluded from that Random Draw. Rule 7: National Jury Voting System: 7(a) National Juries can consist of any number of members (one or more) providing that those members are from that Nation. 7(b) Voting must be carried out in secret (Votes sent by Private Message and not shared between Users) and must only be made public when called upon to do so by the Host during the Grand Final. 7(c) Votes from National Juries consisting of more than one member will have their Votes combined so that they form a single set of results. This set of results will then become the official National Jury Vote of that Nation. If there is a tie between one or more Songs after the jury members have completed their votes then the following tie-break rules will be used (in order of precedence): The Song that will be declared the winner of the tie-break situation shall be.... (i) The Song which received points from the greatest number of Jury members. (ii) If there is still a tie, after (i) then then Song which received the greatest number of 12 Points. (iii) If there is still a tie after (i) and (ii) then the Song which received the greatest number of 11 Points, and proceeding to calculate the total number of 10 points, 9 points, 8 points and so on until the tie-break is resolved. (iv) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii) and (iii) then the Votes shall be analysed to see if there is a "free jury member(s)" remaining who has yet to make their preference known. A "free jury member" is a member of the National Jury in question that did not award any points to any of the Songs that are involved in the tie-break situation. As a result, they have not yet made clear which of the tied Songs they prefer and as such they will be asked to break the tie-break situation by directly choosing which Song they prefer. This tie-break rule can only come into effect if there are 3 or more members on a National Jury and can only be used if there is a free jury member after Voting. There may be more than one "free jury member" and all such members must be asked to break the tie-break situation. (v) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) then a Random Draw will determine which Song wins the tie-break situation. This Random Draw will take place in secret and will be made available to witness live by the National Jury in question and the Host. 7(d) National Juries are excluded from Voting for their own Nation. Rule 8: Hosting of Song Contests: 8(a) The Hosting duties of the Song Contest will be awarded to the Winning Nation of the previous edition of that Contest. 8(b) If the previous Winning Nation cannot undertake the Hosting duties for any reason, then the Hosting duties will then be awarded to the Runner-Up of the previous edition of the Contest. If they too cannot undertake the responsibility then the process of finding a Host will continue to work through those final rankings of the previous edition until a Host is found. 8(c) If a Host still could not be found then all Nations will be invited if they wish to make their interest known and a Host will be selected from those interested parties. 8(d) Upon carrying out the Hosting duties, the Host must allow a minimum total of 20 days for Nations to register their interest to participate in the contest and to select their representatives. 8(e) The Host must allow a minimum total of 10 days for National Juries to Vote during the specified Voting window. 8(f) The Host must Vote in secret and send those Votes to a neutral party before opening up the Voting window for all National Juries. This is to ensure that the Votes of the Host are not influenced by the Votes of other National Juries. 8(g) In the spirit of fair play the Host is forbidden from sharing confidential information with other Users. 8(h) The Host must abide by the same rules which govern the actions of all other Users and Song Contest Participants.

Rule 1: Eligibility of Songs: 1(a) Songs released after December 31st 2010 are not permitted to compete in this edition of the Contest. Only Songs released prior to that date may be considered for entry. An exception will be made in the following circumstance: (i) A single which was released after December 31st 2010, but featured on an album previous to that date may ONLY be chosen if the album was released no more than 12 months prior to the single release. 1(b) All Songs must be Original to either the Artist(s) or the Nation for which they are participating. 1(c) Songs which competed at the Eurovision Song Contest or other such International Song Contests are excluded from competing in our Contests. Equally, Songs which competed in previous editions of our Contests are excluded from future editions. Rule 2: Eligibility of Artists: 2(a) The chosen Artist(s) must be from the Nation which they are participating for or they should have more or equal association with that Nation. 2(b) In the case of Bands or Groups, at least 50% of the Band must be from the Nation which they are participating for or they should have more or equal association with that Nation. 2(c) For the purposes of these Contests and to avoid unecessary confusion, we will use the same criteria for issues of nationality as that used by the International Olympic Committee. For example, artists from Northern Ireland may be chosen to represent either Ireland or the United Kingdom. In such circumstances there should be private communication between both national juries before selecting the artists in question and it will be a matter solely for those national juries concerned. Rule 3: Contest Format: 3(a) All editions of the Song Contests will be a straight-forward Grand Final format (without Semi-Finals or Preliminaries). The only exception will be in the event that there are 40 or more Nations registering to participate in the Contest. 3(b) In the scenario of 40 or more Nations participating in the Contest , it will be at the discretion of the Host Nation whether or not to conduct a straight-forward Grand-Final or whether to introduce a Semi-Final system (consisting of 2 Semi-Finals with an even number of Nations in each where possible. There will be a Random Draw to determine which Songs participate in which Semi-Finals). 3(c) In the case of Semi-Finals or Preliminaries, all Nations will have to participate in these stages (there will be no automatic qualifiers for the Grand Final) and at least 28 Nations must be advanced to the Grand Final event. Rule 4: Scoring System and Tie-Break Scenarios: 4(a) The Scoring system will use a similar format to that used in the Eurovision Song Contest (except that we will be using 9 points and 11 points, unlike in the Eurovision Song Contest). Points will be awarded as follows: 12 Points given to song of 1st preference, 11 Points to 2nd preference, 10 Points for 3rd prefrence and so on with the Points value decreasing by one Point each time with 1 Point being awarded to the song of 12th preference. 4(b) In the event of a tie between 2 or more Songs in the overall scoreboard after all the votes have been announced, they shall be separated by the following criteria (in order of precedence): The Song that will be declared the winner of the tie-break situation shall be.... (i) The Song which received points from the greatest number of National Juries. (ii) If there is still a tie, after (i) then then Song which received the greatest number of 12 Points. (iii) If there is still a tie after (i) and (ii) then the Song which received the greatest number of 11 Points, and proceeding to calculate the total number of 10 points, 9 points, 8 points and so on until the tie-break is resolved. (iv) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii) and (iii) then the Song which received points from the greatest number of individual jury members excluding the jury members from the Nations involved in the tie-break situation. If the Songs remain tied after (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) then the songs in question will be considered to have tied for that position and will not be separated by any other means in the Final Ranking. Rule 5: Confirmation of Participation: 5(a) In order to participate in the Song Contest, Nations must Register their interest to compete within the required specified time-frame. This window must be open for at least 20 days in order to allow enough time for Nations to makes their interest known. 5(b) Confirmation of Participation will be subject to the following rules: (i) All Nations must take part in the Voting process in order to participate in the Song Contest. Any Nations that have Registered to compete and submit an entry but do not Vote will be automatically disqualified. (ii) If there is corruption discovered in any way during the Voting process then the Nation of the offending national jury member(s) will be under investigation with a view to potential disqualification. (iii) If corruption by a National Jury is discovered after the competition, then that Nation may be disqualified from future contests and their performance at the competition in question may be placed under review or even annulled. 5(c) Only Nations that have Registered a song/artist to participate in the Song Contest may take part in the official Voting process. Rule 6: Running Order of National Jury Voting: 6(a) A Random Draw must always be conducted in order to produce the Order of National Jury Voting during the Grand Final. 6(b) This Random Draw should be made available for other users to watch live where possible so that it can be verified. 6(c) The Order in which National Juries will vote must never be changed from the result of the Order created by the Random Draw except in the following circumstances: (i) If a National Jury is drawn to announce their Votes outside of reasonable local hours in that Nation (reasonable hours for the purposes of these Contests are determined as anytime between 09:30am - 22:30pm local time in the Nation in question), then that National Jury is eligble to ask for a Swap in the Order of their Voting. (ii) Swaps will always be sought firstly with other Nations that are eligible for a Swap due to awkward voting hours. If there is more than one Nation eligible for Swaps, the process will always begin with the first eligible Nation according to the result of the already conducted Random Draw which was used to determine the Order of National Jury Voting. If there are no obvious Swaps then a Random Draw should be conducted to decide which Nation will complete the Swap. The Nations placed in the final 5 of the original jury order will be excluded from this random draw as their position will be secure unless they are eligible for a Swap. Swaps with Nations that would result in further Swaps needed will not be permitted and thus those Nations are also excluded from that Random Draw. Rule 7: National Jury Voting System: 7(a) National Juries can consist of any number of members (one or more) providing that those members are from that Nation. 7(b) Voting must be carried out in secret (Votes sent by Private Message and not shared between Users) and must only be made public when called upon to do so by the Host during the Grand Final. 7(c) Votes from National Juries consisting of more than one member will have their Votes combined so that they form a single set of results. This set of results will then become the official National Jury Vote of that Nation. If there is a tie between one or more Songs after the jury members have completed their votes then the following tie-break rules will be used (in order of precedence): The Song that will be declared the winner of the tie-break situation shall be.... (i) The Song which received points from the greatest number of Jury members. (ii) If there is still a tie, after (i) then then Song which received the greatest number of 12 Points. (iii) If there is still a tie after (i) and (ii) then the Song which received the greatest number of 11 Points, and proceeding to calculate the total number of 10 points, 9 points, 8 points and so on until the tie-break is resolved. (iv) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii) and (iii) then the Votes shall be analysed to see if there is a "free jury member(s)" remaining who has yet to make their preference known. A "free jury member" is a member of the National Jury in question that did not award any points to any of the Songs that are involved in the tie-break situation. As a result, they have not yet made clear which of the tied Songs they prefer and as such they will be asked to break the tie-break situation by directly choosing which Song they prefer. This tie-break rule can only come into effect if there are 3 or more members on a National Jury and can only be used if there is a free jury member after Voting. There may be more than one "free jury member" and all such members must be asked to break the tie-break situation. (v) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) then a Random Draw will determine which Song wins the tie-break situation. This Random Draw will take place in secret and will be made available to witness live by the National Jury in question and the Host. 7(d) National Juries are excluded from Voting for their own Nation. Rule 8: Hosting of Song Contests: 8(a) The Hosting duties of the Song Contest will be awarded to the Winning Nation of the previous edition of that Contest. 8(b) If the previous Winning Nation cannot undertake the Hosting duties for any reason, then the Hosting duties will then be awarded to the Runner-Up of the previous edition of the Contest. If they too cannot undertake the responsibility then the process of finding a Host will continue to work through those final rankings of the previous edition until a Host is found. 8(c) If a Host still could not be found then all Nations will be invited if they wish to make their interest known and a Host will be selected from those interested parties. 8(d) Upon carrying out the Hosting duties, the Host must allow a minimum total of 20 days for Nations to register their interest to participate in the contest and to select their representatives. 8(e) The Host must allow a minimum total of 10 days for National Juries to Vote during the specified Voting window. 8(f) The Host must Vote in secret and send those Votes to a neutral party before opening up the Voting window for all National Juries. This is to ensure that the Votes of the Host are not influenced by the Votes of other National Juries. 8(g) In the spirit of fair play the Host is forbidden from sharing confidential information with other Users. 8(h) The Host must abide by the same rules which govern the actions of all other Users and Song Contest Participants.

SECTION 1 - SONG CHOICE AND ELIGIBILITY: 1. (a) All songs must be ORIGINAL, NEW MATERIAL, released on or after January 1st, 2019. Exceptions will be made in the following circumstances: (i) A song released as a single no more than 6 months before the cut-off date may ONLY be chosen if that song was subsequently released on an album for the first time during the official period of eligibility. For example, a song which was released as a single on July 1st, 2018 may be chosen if that song was later included in an album released on January 1st, 2019 or thereafter. (ii) A song which is a copy of an original song may ONLY be chosen if both artists of the original song and the copy version are from the same nation AND if the original song was also released within the period of eligibility (on or after January 1st, 2019). 1. (b) All songs must be ORIGINAL to the nation for which they are competing. In other words, if a song is a copy or cover of an original song by an artist from another nation, then it is ONLY permitted to participate for the nation of the artist who produced the original version. If the artist of the cover version is from the same nation as the original artist, then the cover version must fulfill rule 1(a) in order to be eligible to participate. 1. (c) Songs that competed at Eurovision shall be excluded from competing at TISC. However, songs which competed in a national final but were not put forward to represent their nation at Eurovision may be selected to compete at TISC. SECTION 2 - ARTIST CHOICE AND ELIGIBILITY: 2. (a) Artists chosen to represent a nation must have been born in or be of the same nationality as the nation for which they are participating OR they must have more or equal association with that nation. 2. (b) In the case of bands, at least 50% of the band must be born in or be of the same nationality as the nation for which they are participating OR they should have more or equal association with that nation. 2. (c) For the purposes of the Totallympics International Song Contest, the same concept of nationality as that used by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) will be adopted. So, for example, artists from Scotland must represent Great Britain, artists from Faroe Islands must represent Denmark, etc. SECTION 3 - NATIONAL JURY VOTING: 3. (a) National juries may consist of a single jury member OR a multi-member jury made up of two or more users from that nation. 3. (b) National juries must send their votes in SECRET (via private message) to the host organising member(s) of the song contest as requested during the designated voting window. 3. (c) Each jury member in a multi-member jury shall send their individual preferences in SECRET (via private message) to the host organising member(s). The votes from each of the members of the multi-member jury will be combined to form a single set of votes which will represent the overall voting preference of that national jury. In this way, the votes from each of the participating national juries, whether single or multi-member juries, will hold equal value or weight. 3. (d) National juries will use the following voting format: (i) Jury members will award points to their 12 favourite songs in ascending manner from points 1 through 12 (inclusive) with the first preference receiving a maximum score of 12 points, second preference receiving 11 points, third preference receiving 10 points, and so forth until the song of 12th preference which will receive a single point. See below scoring table for reference: 1st Preference 12 pts 2nd Preference 11 pts 3rd Preference 10 pts 4th Preference 9 pts 5th Preference 8 pts 6th Preference 7 pts 7th Preference 6 pts 8th Preference 5 pts 9th Preference 4 pts 10th Preference 3 pts 11th Preference 2 pts 12th Preference 1 pt (ii) In single member juries, these scores will subsequently represent the National Jury Vote of that nation. However, in multi-member juries, the votes of all the jury members from that nation will be combined to form a single set of points. The song which has received the most number of points from that national jury will be deemed to be the overall first preference choice of that jury and will receive the maximum score of 12 points; the song which has received the second highest number of points from that national jury will be deemed to be the overall second preference choice of that jury and will receive a score of 11 points, and so forth until the song which has received the 12th highest number of points which will receive a single point from that national jury. 3. (d) National juries must submit their votes by the official voting deadline as designated by the host organiser(s). National juries who fail to submit their votes within the required time frame will be disqualified from the contest. 3. (e) Any Nation which fails to participate in the voting process will be automatically disqualified from the contest. 3. (f) A random draw will take place in advance of the Grand Final to determine the order in which the National Juries will reveal their votes. This draw must be shown to be transparent and available to competing members should they wish to follow the result. The result of this draw must always be adhered to in order to preserve the random nature in which the voting will progress during the Grand Final. A National Jury may only request a "swap" in their designated voting position if, after the random draw, they have been assigned a voting slot outside of "reasonable hours". For the purpose of this contest, reasonable hours will be determined as anytime between 08:30-23:00 local time of that national jury. During the "swap" process, the host organiser will first look to make swaps between National Juries who are eligible for swaps after the random draw. SECTION 4 - NATIONAL JURY TIE-BREAK PROCEDURES: 4. (a) In the event of a tie in the combined votes of multi-member juries, the following set of rules outlines how the tie-break will be resolved: (i) The song which has received points from the greatest number of jury members will be deemed the winner of the tie. For example, take the following scenario.... Songs A, B, and C each received a combined score of 10 points after the results of each national jury member were combined and calculated. Song A received a single score of 10 points from one jury member, Song B received scores of 7 points and 3 points from two separate jury members and Song C received scores of 5 points, 3 points and 2 points from 3 separate jury members. All three songs received a total of 10 points, however, Song C is deemed to be the winner of the tie because a greater number of jury members voted for that song (3 members in this case). (ii) If the songs remain deadlocked after 4 (a) (i), the song which received the highest value score from an individual jury member will be deemed the winner of the tie. For example, take the following scenario.... Song A and Song B each received a combined score of 14 points after the results of each national jury member were combined and calculated. Song A received scores of 8+6 points while Song B received scores of 7+7 points. Song A will be deemed the winner of that tie since that song received a score of higher value (8 points) from one of the national jury members. (iii) If the songs remain deadlocked after 4 (a) (i) and (ii), jury members from that national jury who did not award any votes to any of the songs involved in the tie-break will be asked to break the tie. This tie-break rule can only ever be used to break ties in juries of 3 members or more and ONLY if there is a jury member who did not vote for any of the songs involved in the tie-break. (iv) After the procedures 4 (a) (i), (ii) and (iii) have been carried out, all outstanding ties within the votes of a national jury shall be resolved by carrying out a single random draw. The nature of this random draw shall be as follows: The names of each national jury member will be entered into a draw. Each name will be drawn. The first jury member drawn will be awarded the right to break the unresolved tie of highest value. The second jury member drawn will be awarded the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value. For example, take the following scenario.... there are two members of National Jury X. After the votes of User A and User B are combined and calculated the following situation arises: COUNTRY (Total points) -> Combined value Country A (24 points) -> 12 points Country B (21 points) -> 11 or 10 points Country C (21 points) -> 11 or 10 points Country D (18 points) -> 9 points Country E (16 points) -> 8 points Country F (13 points) -> 7 or 6 points Country G (13 points) -> 7 or 6 points Country H (10 points) -> 5 points Country I (7 points) -> 4 or 3 points County J (7 points) -> 4 or 3 points Country K (4 points) -> 2 points Country L (1 point) -> 1 or 0 points County M (1 point) -> 1 or 0 points Those highlighted in red text are those ties which could not be resolved by 4 (a) (i), (ii) or (iii). As a result of the random draw, User A was drawn first, meaning that user will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the highest value (the tie between Country B and C for 11 or 10 points). User B was drawn second meaning that user will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value (the tie between Country F and G for 7 or 6 points). The order will then be reversed so that User B will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the third highest value (the tie between Country I and J for 4 or 3 points). User A will finally be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the fourth highest value (the tie between Country L and M for 1 or 0 points). This procedure to break the unresolved ties will be used for national juries of any number with the first user drawn being given the right to break the unresolved tie of the highest value, the second user drawn being given the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value, third user the third highest tie, etc. reversing the order if need be when the order has completed one cycle. However, it should be noted that unresolved tie-breaks which require random draws will occur mostly in two-member juries since national juries with 3 or more members will likely resolve all ties through 4 (a) (i), (ii) or (iii). SECTION 5 - OVERALL SCOREBOARD TIE-BREAK PROCEDURES: 5. (a) In the event of a tie in the overall scoreboard between two or more nations, the following set of rules outlines how the tie-break will be resolved: (i) The nation which has received points from the greatest number of National Juries will be deemed the winner of the tie. (ii) If there is still a tie after 5 (a) (i), the nation which has received the greatest number of 12 points will be deemed the winner of the tie. (iii) If there is still a tie after 5 (a) (i), (ii), the nation which has received the greatest number of 11 points will be deemed the winner of the tie. If the tie remains deadlocked, the process will continue by counting the number of 10 points each nation received, 9 points, 8 points, and so on until the tie-break can be resolved. 5. (b) If there is still a tie in the overall scoreboard between two or more nations after 5 (a) (i), (ii) and (iii) have been implemented, those nations shall be deemed to have tied for position in the overall scoreboard. SECTION 6 - TEAM CHALLENGE FORMAT AND RULES: 6. (a) Each edition of the Totallympics International Song Contest will feature a Team Challenge competition. The main purpose of this team element is to further enhance the community spirit that is an integral feature of TISC events and to provide another means of encouraging users to interact with one another. (b) The TISC Team Challenge event may vary in format from one contest to the next. The nature of the format will be dependent on the number of participating nations. (c) Nations will be assigned to their team by random draw. (d) The ideal format is that there will be a minimum of 8 teams, each made up of 4 nations. However, if that is not possible, the teams will be formed from one of the following formats (listed in order of preference): (i) teams of 3 nations (ii) teams of 5 nations (iii) if it's not possible for each team to have the same number of nations, a special provision will be introduced (for example: power plays). (e) It is recommended that the teams shall be named after various cities/regions of the host country and combined with a nickname. For example, a contest in Brazil might feature teams called the Brasilia Capitals and Manaus Amazons. SECTION 7 - ELIGIBILITY, CONDUCT AND RESPONSIBILITY OF PARTICIPANTS: 7. (a) Any first time participant must have been registered on the forum at least 2 months before they take part in the contest. The date used to calculate the 2 months rule will be 2 months prior to the National Selection deadline. A first time participant may be allowed special dispensation to participate in TISC, even if they do not fulfill the 2-month rule criteria. However, in such circumstances, that user must have shown a high level of activity in the forum in terms of posts and presence. This special dispensation will be awarded on the agreement of Totallympics admin, namely Sindo, who will conduct all necessary verification checks and will be given final approval by the TISC management team, namely OlympicIRL and the host of that TISC edition. These rules are not designed to exclude, only to ensure TISC retains a distinct character, built upon a unique community atmosphere created by users of the forum. 7. (b) Participating users shall be respectful of the song choice of all nations once they fulfill all of the necessary eligibility requirements. 7. (c) Participating users must not reveal or give any indication as to their preferences or voting choices at any stage before the official announcement of the votes during the Grand Final. 7. (d) Participating users must not discuss private voting procedures with other members so as to ensure fairness is always in play and to ensure any suspense during the Grand Final is kept intact. 7. (e) Participating users must be respectful when posting and discussing with other members on the Totallympics International Song Contest Thread. 7. (f) If foul play is detected with respect to 7 (a), (b), (c), (d) or (e) at any stage before, during or after the contest, the TISC organising committee reserves the right to place the participation or result of that nation under review. SECTION 8 - HOSTING DUTIES, RESPONSIBILITIES AND ORGANISATIONAL TIMEFRAME: 8. (a) The host organisation should adhere to the follow basic schedule upon organising the contest: There shall be 2 weeks allocated for registration and national selection until the deadline to submit an entry. There shall be 2 weeks allocated for voting (of which a maximum of 3 days will be allocated to the host jury to submit their votes to a designated neutral third party). There shall be a maximum of 2 weeks allocated after the voting window closes to allow the hosts time to organise the Grand Final. This 6 week time-frame was agreed upon during a public vote but in special circumstances, exceptions will be considered. 8. (c) The host organiser(s) must submit their votes in advance of receiving votes from other National Juries by private message. The votes of the host(s) should be sent by private message to a neutral third party after the national selection window has passed and before the national jury voting phase begins. 8. (d) The host organiser(s) must abide by the same rules that govern the participation of users in the Totallympics International Song Contest as outlined in Section 6. SECTION 9 - FUTURE HOSTING RIGHTS: 9. (a) Upon completion of the relevant song contest, the winning nation will automatically be awarded the rights to host the subsequent Totallympics International Song Contest 1 year later. 9. (b) If the winning nation wishes to decline the hosting duties, the runner-up of that edition will then be awarded the opportunity to accept or decline the hosting rights. If the runner-up also declines the hosting duties, the 3rd placed nation of that edition will have the opportunity to accept or decline the hosting rights. 9. (c) In the event that the hosting rights are declined by the top 3 ranked nations at the previous edition of the relevant TISC, an open bid process will be conducted in order to award the hosting rights. This process will be open to all candidates, first-time hosts as well as previous hosts. A random draw will take place with each candidate being awarded a number of tickets in the draw. The more tickets a candidate has entered, the better their chance of being selected as host. Here is the process for how the tickets will be distributed: Each candidate automatically awarded 1 ticket each in the draw. However, additional tickets awarded as follows - did not host in the previous 5 editions (+1 additional ticket) - did not host in the previous 10 editions (+1 additional ticket) - did not host previously (+2 additional tickets) - took part in the previous bidding process (+1 additional ticket). For first-time hosts, they will add an additional ticket for each edition they are unsuccessful for in bidding, thus increasing their chance slightly with each unsuccessful bid. This increase will only be available for first-time hosts. Additionally, if a first-time host missed 2 consecutive bidding campaigns, then their tickets no longer carry forward and they lose those additional tickets.

SECTION 1 - SONG CHOICE AND ELIGIBILITY: 1. (a) All songs must be released on or before December 31st, 2014, in keeping with TISC Open rules whereby songs released in the last 5 years are ineligible to compete. 1. (b) All songs must be ORIGINAL to the nation for which they are competing. In other words, if a song is a copy or cover of an original song by an artist from another nation, then it is ONLY permitted to participate for the nation of the artist who produced the original version. If the artist of the cover version is from the same nation as the original artist, then the cover version must fulfill rule 1(a) in order to be eligible to participate. 1. (c) Songs that competed at Eurovision shall be excluded from competing at TISC. However, songs which competed in a national final but were not put forward to represent their nation at Eurovision may be selected to compete at TISC. SECTION 2 - ARTIST CHOICE AND ELIGIBILITY: 2. (a) Artists chosen to represent a nation must have been born in or be of the same nationality as the nation for which they are participating OR they must have more or equal association with that nation. 2. (b) In the case of bands, at least 50% of the band must be born in or be of the same nationality as the nation for which they are participating OR they should have more or equal association with that nation. 2. (c) For the purposes of the Totallympics International Song Contest, the same concept of nationality as that used by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) will be adopted. So, for example, artists from Scotland must represent Great Britain, artists from Faroe Islands must represent Denmark, etc. SECTION 3 - NATIONAL JURY VOTING: 3. (a) National juries may consist of a single jury member OR a multi-member jury made up of two or more users from that nation. 3. (b) National juries must send their votes in SECRET (via private message) to the host organising member(s) of the song contest as requested during the designated voting window. 3. (c) Each jury member in a multi-member jury shall send their individual preferences in SECRET (via private message) to the host organising member(s). The votes from each of the members of the multi-member jury will be combined to form a single set of votes which will represent the overall voting preference of that national jury. In this way, the votes from each of the participating national juries, whether single or multi-member juries, will hold equal value or weight. 3. (d) National juries will use the following voting format: (i) Jury members will award points to their 12 favourite songs in ascending manner from points 1 through 12 (inclusive) with the first preference receiving a maximum score of 12 points, second preference receiving 11 points, third preference receiving 10 points, and so forth until the song of 12th preference which will receive a single point. See below scoring table for reference: 1st Preference 12 pts 2nd Preference 11 pts 3rd Preference 10 pts 4th Preference 9 pts 5th Preference 8 pts 6th Preference 7 pts 7th Preference 6 pts 8th Preference 5 pts 9th Preference 4 pts 10th Preference 3 pts 11th Preference 2 pts 12th Preference 1 pt (ii) In single member juries, these scores will subsequently represent the National Jury Vote of that nation. However, in multi-member juries, the votes of all the jury members from that nation will be combined to form a single set of points. The song which has received the most number of points from that national jury will be deemed to be the overall first preference choice of that jury and will receive the maximum score of 12 points; the song which has received the second highest number of points from that national jury will be deemed to be the overall second preference choice of that jury and will receive a score of 11 points, and so forth until the song which has received the 12th highest number of points which will receive a single point from that national jury. 3. (d) National juries must submit their votes by the official voting deadline as designated by the host organiser(s). National juries who fail to submit their votes within the required time frame will be disqualified from the contest. 3. (e) Any Nation which fails to participate in the voting process will be automatically disqualified from the contest. 3. (f) A random draw will take place in advance of the Grand Final to determine the order in which the National Juries will reveal their votes. This draw must be shown to be transparent and available to competing members should they wish to follow the result. The result of this draw must always be adhered to in order to preserve the random nature in which the voting will progress during the Grand Final. A National Jury may only request a "swap" in their designated voting position if, after the random draw, they have been assigned a voting slot outside of "reasonable hours". For the purpose of this contest, reasonable hours will be determined as anytime between 08:30-23:00 local time of that national jury. During the "swap" process, the host organiser will first look to make swaps between National Juries who are eligible for swaps after the random draw. SECTION 4 - NATIONAL JURY TIE-BREAK PROCEDURES: 4. (a) In the event of a tie in the combined votes of multi-member juries, the following set of rules outlines how the tie-break will be resolved: (i) The song which has received points from the greatest number of jury members will be deemed the winner of the tie. For example, take the following scenario.... Songs A, B, and C each received a combined score of 10 points after the results of each national jury member were combined and calculated. Song A received a single score of 10 points from one jury member, Song B received scores of 7 points and 3 points from two separate jury members and Song C received scores of 5 points, 3 points and 2 points from 3 separate jury members. All three songs received a total of 10 points, however, Song C is deemed to be the winner of the tie because a greater number of jury members voted for that song (3 members in this case). (ii) If the songs remain deadlocked after 4 (a) (i), the song which received the highest value score from an individual jury member will be deemed the winner of the tie. For example, take the following scenario.... Song A and Song B each received a combined score of 14 points after the results of each national jury member were combined and calculated. Song A received scores of 8+6 points while Song B received scores of 7+7 points. Song A will be deemed the winner of that tie since that song received a score of higher value (8 points) from one of the national jury members. (iii) If the songs remain deadlocked after 4 (a) (i) and (ii), jury members from that national jury who did not award any votes to any of the songs involved in the tie-break will be asked to break the tie. This tie-break rule can only ever be used to break ties in juries of 3 members or more and ONLY if there is a jury member who did not vote for any of the songs involved in the tie-break. (iv) After the procedures 4 (a) (i), (ii) and (iii) have been carried out, all outstanding ties within the votes of a national jury shall be resolved by carrying out a single random draw. The nature of this random draw shall be as follows: The names of each national jury member will be entered into a draw. Each name will be drawn. The first jury member drawn will be awarded the right to break the unresolved tie of highest value. The second jury member drawn will be awarded the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value. For example, take the following scenario.... there are two members of National Jury X. After the votes of User A and User B are combined and calculated the following situation arises: COUNTRY (Total points) -> Combined value Country A (24 points) -> 12 points Country B (21 points) -> 11 or 10 points Country C (21 points) -> 11 or 10 points Country D (18 points) -> 9 points Country E (16 points) -> 8 points Country F (13 points) -> 7 or 6 points Country G (13 points) -> 7 or 6 points Country H (10 points) -> 5 points Country I (7 points) -> 4 or 3 points County J (7 points) -> 4 or 3 points Country K (4 points) -> 2 points Country L (1 point) -> 1 or 0 points County M (1 point) -> 1 or 0 points Those highlighted in red text are those ties which could not be resolved by 4 (a) (i), (ii) or (iii). As a result of the random draw, User A was drawn first, meaning that user will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the highest value (the tie between Country B and C for 11 or 10 points). User B was drawn second meaning that user will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value (the tie between Country F and G for 7 or 6 points). The order will then be reversed so that User B will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the third highest value (the tie between Country I and J for 4 or 3 points). User A will finally be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the fourth highest value (the tie between Country L and M for 1 or 0 points). This procedure to break the unresolved ties will be used for national juries of any number with the first user drawn being given the right to break the unresolved tie of the highest value, the second user drawn being given the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value, third user the third highest tie, etc. reversing the order if need be when the order has completed one cycle. However, it should be noted that unresolved tie-breaks which require random draws will occur mostly in two-member juries since national juries with 3 or more members will likely resolve all ties through 4 (a) (i), (ii) or (iii). SECTION 5 - OVERALL SCOREBOARD TIE-BREAK PROCEDURES: 5. (a) In the event of a tie in the overall scoreboard between two or more nations, the following set of rules outlines how the tie-break will be resolved: (i) The nation which has received points from the greatest number of National Juries will be deemed the winner of the tie. (ii) If there is still a tie after 5 (a) (i), the nation which has received the greatest number of 12 points will be deemed the winner of the tie. (iii) If there is still a tie after 5 (a) (i), (ii), the nation which has received the greatest number of 11 points will be deemed the winner of the tie. If the tie remains deadlocked, the process will continue by counting the number of 10 points each nation received, 9 points, 8 points, and so on until the tie-break can be resolved. 5. (b) If there is still a tie in the overall scoreboard between two or more nations after 5 (a) (i), (ii) and (iii) have been implemented, those nations shall be deemed to have tied for position in the overall scoreboard. SECTION 6 - TEAM CHALLENGE FORMAT AND RULES: 6. (a) Each edition of the Totallympics International Song Contest will feature a Team Challenge competition. The main purpose of this team element is to further enhance the community spirit that is an integral feature of TISC events and to provide another means of encouraging users to interact with one another. (b) The TISC Team Challenge event may vary in format from one contest to the next. The nature of the format will be dependent on the number of participating nations. (c) Nations will be assigned to their team by random draw. (d) The ideal format is that there will be a minimum of 8 teams, each made up of 4 nations. However, if that is not possible, the teams will be formed from one of the following formats (listed in order of preference): (i) teams of 3 nations (ii) teams of 5 nations (iii) if it's not possible for each team to have the same number of nations, a special provision will be introduced (for example: power plays). (e) It is recommended that the teams shall be named after various cities/regions of the host country and combined with a nickname. For example, a contest in Brazil might feature teams called the Brasilia Capitals and Manaus Amazons. SECTION 7 - ELIGIBILITY, CONDUCT AND RESPONSIBILITY OF PARTICIPANTS: 7. (a) Any first time participant must have been registered on the forum at least 2 months before they take part in the contest. The date used to calculate the 2 months rule will be 2 months prior to the National Selection deadline. A first time participant may be allowed special dispensation to participate in TISC, even if they do not fulfill the 2-month rule criteria. However, in such circumstances, that user must have shown a high level of activity in the forum in terms of posts and presence. This special dispensation will be awarded on the agreement of Totallympics admin, namely Sindo, who will conduct all necessary verification checks and will be given final approval by the TISC management team, namely OlympicIRL and the host of that TISC edition. These rules are not designed to exclude, only to ensure TISC retains a distinct character, built upon a unique community atmosphere created by users of the forum. 7. (b) Participating users shall be respectful of the song choice of all nations once they fulfill all of the necessary eligibility requirements. 7. (c) Participating users must not reveal or give any indication as to their preferences or voting choices at any stage before the official announcement of the votes during the Grand Final. 7. (d) Participating users must not discuss private voting procedures with other members so as to ensure fairness is always in play and to ensure any suspense during the Grand Final is kept intact. 7. (e) Participating users must be respectful when posting and discussing with other members on the Totallympics International Song Contest Thread. 7. (f) If foul play is detected with respect to 7 (a), (b), (c), (d) or (e) at any stage before, during or after the contest, the TISC organising committee reserves the right to place the participation or result of that nation under review. SECTION 8 - HOSTING DUTIES, RESPONSIBILITIES AND ORGANISATIONAL TIMEFRAME: 8. (a) The host organisation should adhere to the follow basic schedule upon organising the contest: There shall be 2 weeks allocated for registration and national selection until the deadline to submit an entry. There shall be 2 weeks allocated for voting (of which a maximum of 3 days will be allocated to the host jury to submit their votes to a designated neutral third party). There shall be a maximum of 2 weeks allocated after the voting window closes to allow the hosts time to organise the Grand Final. This 6 week time-frame was agreed upon during a public vote but in special circumstances, exceptions will be considered. 8. (c) The host organiser(s) must submit their votes in advance of receiving votes from other National Juries by private message. The votes of the host(s) should be sent by private message to a neutral third party after the national selection window has passed and before the national jury voting phase begins. 8. (d) The host organiser(s) must abide by the same rules that govern the participation of users in the Totallympics International Song Contest as outlined in Section 6. SECTION 9 - FUTURE HOSTING RIGHTS: 9. (a) Upon completion of the relevant song contest, the winning nation will automatically be awarded the rights to host the subsequent Totallympics International Song Contest 1 year later. 9. (b) If the winning nation wishes to decline the hosting duties, the runner-up of that edition will then be awarded the opportunity to accept or decline the hosting rights. If the runner-up also declines the hosting duties, the 3rd placed nation of that edition will have the opportunity to accept or decline the hosting rights. 9. (c) In the event that the hosting rights are declined by the top 3 ranked nations at the previous edition of the relevant TISC, an open bid process will be conducted in order to award the hosting rights. This process will be open to all candidates, first-time hosts as well as previous hosts. A random draw will take place with each candidate being awarded a number of tickets in the draw. The more tickets a candidate has entered, the better their chance of being selected as host. Here is the process for how the tickets will be distributed: Each candidate automatically awarded 1 ticket each in the draw. However, additional tickets awarded as follows - did not host in the previous 5 editions (+1 additional ticket) - did not host in the previous 10 editions (+1 additional ticket) - did not host previously (+2 additional tickets) - took part in the previous bidding process (+1 additional ticket). For first-time hosts, they will add an additional ticket for each edition they are unsuccessful for in bidding, thus increasing their chance slightly with each unsuccessful bid. This increase will only be available for first-time hosts. Additionally, if a first-time host missed 2 consecutive bidding campaigns, then their tickets no longer carry forward and they lose those additional tickets.

SECTION 1 - SONG CHOICE AND ELIGIBILITY: 1. (a) All songs must be ORIGINAL, NEW MATERIAL, released on or after January 1st, 2018. Exceptions will be made in the following circumstances: (i) A song released as a single no more than 6 months before the cut-off date may ONLY be chosen if that song was subsequently released on an album for the first time during the official period of eligibility. For example, a song which was released as a single on July 1st, 2017 may be chosen if that song was later included in an album released on January 1st, 2018 or thereafter. (ii) A song which is a copy of an original song may ONLY be chosen if both artists of the original song and the copy version are from the same nation AND if the original song was also released within the period of eligibility (on or after January 1st, 2018). 1. (b) All songs must be ORIGINAL to the nation for which they are competing. In other words, if a song is a copy or cover of an original song by an artist from another nation, then it is ONLY permitted to participate for the nation of the artist who produced the original version. If the artist of the cover version is from the same nation as the original artist, then the cover version must fulfill rule 1(a) in order to be eligible to participate. 1. (c) Songs that competed at Eurovision shall be excluded from competing at TISC. However, songs which competed in a national final but were not put forward to represent their nation at Eurovision may be selected to compete at TISC. SECTION 2 - ARTIST CHOICE AND ELIGIBILITY: 2. (a) Artists chosen to represent a nation must have been born in or be of the same nationality as the nation for which they are participating OR they must have more or equal association with that nation. 2. (b) In the case of bands, at least 50% of the band must be born in or be of the same nationality as the nation for which they are participating OR they should have more or equal association with that nation. 2. (c) For the purposes of the Totallympics International Song Contest, the same concept of nationality as that used by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) will be adopted. So, for example, artists from Scotland must represent Great Britain, artists from Faroe Islands must represent Denmark, etc. SECTION 3 - NATIONAL JURY VOTING: 3. (a) National juries may consist of a single jury member OR a multi-member jury made up of two or more users from that nation. 3. (b) National juries must send their votes in SECRET (via private message) to the host organising member(s) of the song contest as requested during the designated voting window. 3. (c) Each jury member in a multi-member jury shall send their individual preferences in SECRET (via private message) to the host organising member(s). The votes from each of the members of the multi-member jury will be combined to form a single set of votes which will represent the overall voting preference of that national jury. In this way, the votes from each of the participating national juries, whether single or multi-member juries, will hold equal value or weight. 3. (d) National juries will use the following voting format: (i) Jury members will award points to their 12 favourite songs in ascending manner from points 1 through 12 (inclusive) with the first preference receiving a maximum score of 12 points, second preference receiving 11 points, third preference receiving 10 points, and so forth until the song of 12th preference which will receive a single point. See below scoring table for reference: 1st Preference 12 pts 2nd Preference 11 pts 3rd Preference 10 pts 4th Preference 9 pts 5th Preference 8 pts 6th Preference 7 pts 7th Preference 6 pts 8th Preference 5 pts 9th Preference 4 pts 10th Preference 3 pts 11th Preference 2 pts 12th Preference 1 pt (ii) In single member juries, these scores will subsequently represent the National Jury Vote of that nation. However, in multi-member juries, the votes of all the jury members from that nation will be combined to form a single set of points. The song which has received the most number of points from that national jury will be deemed to be the overall first preference choice of that jury and will receive the maximum score of 12 points; the song which has received the second highest number of points from that national jury will be deemed to be the overall second preference choice of that jury and will receive a score of 11 points, and so forth until the song which has received the 12th highest number of points which will receive a single point from that national jury. 3. (d) National juries must submit their votes by the official voting deadline as designated by the host organiser(s). National juries who fail to submit their votes within the required time frame will be disqualified from the contest. 3. (e) Any Nation which fails to participate in the voting process will be automatically disqualified from the contest. 3. (f) A random draw will take place in advance of the Grand Final to determine the order in which the National Juries will reveal their votes. This draw must be shown to be transparent and available to competing members should they wish to follow the result. The result of this draw must always be adhered to in order to preserve the random nature in which the voting will progress during the Grand Final. A National Jury may only request a "swap" in their designated voting position if, after the random draw, they have been assigned a voting slot outside of "reasonable hours". For the purpose of this contest, reasonable hours will be determined as anytime between 08:30-23:00 local time of that national jury. During the "swap" process, the host organiser will first look to make swaps between National Juries who are eligible for swaps after the random draw. SECTION 4 - NATIONAL JURY TIE-BREAK PROCEDURES: 4. (a) In the event of a tie in the combined votes of multi-member juries, the following set of rules outlines how the tie-break will be resolved: (i) The song which has received points from the greatest number of jury members will be deemed the winner of the tie. For example, take the following scenario.... Songs A, B, and C each received a combined score of 10 points after the results of each national jury member were combined and calculated. Song A received a single score of 10 points from one jury member, Song B received scores of 7 points and 3 points from two separate jury members and Song C received scores of 5 points, 3 points and 2 points from 3 separate jury members. All three songs received a total of 10 points, however, Song C is deemed to be the winner of the tie because a greater number of jury members voted for that song (3 members in this case). (ii) If the songs remain deadlocked after 4 (a) (i), the song which received the highest value score from an individual jury member will be deemed the winner of the tie. For example, take the following scenario.... Song A and Song B each received a combined score of 14 points after the results of each national jury member were combined and calculated. Song A received scores of 8+6 points while Song B received scores of 7+7 points. Song A will be deemed the winner of that tie since that song received a score of higher value (8 points) from one of the national jury members. (iii) If the songs remain deadlocked after 4 (a) (i) and (ii), jury members from that national jury who did not award any votes to any of the songs involved in the tie-break will be asked to break the tie. This tie-break rule can only ever be used to break ties in juries of 3 members or more and ONLY if there is a jury member who did not vote for any of the songs involved in the tie-break. (iv) After the procedures 4 (a) (i), (ii) and (iii) have been carried out, all outstanding ties within the votes of a national jury shall be resolved by carrying out a single random draw. The nature of this random draw shall be as follows: The names of each national jury member will be entered into a draw. Each name will be drawn. The first jury member drawn will be awarded the right to break the unresolved tie of highest value. The second jury member drawn will be awarded the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value. For example, take the following scenario.... there are two members of National Jury X. After the votes of User A and User B are combined and calculated the following situation arises: COUNTRY (Total points) -> Combined value Country A (24 points) -> 12 points Country B (21 points) -> 11 or 10 points Country C (21 points) -> 11 or 10 points Country D (18 points) -> 9 points Country E (16 points) -> 8 points Country F (13 points) -> 7 or 6 points Country G (13 points) -> 7 or 6 points Country H (10 points) -> 5 points Country I (7 points) -> 4 or 3 points County J (7 points) -> 4 or 3 points Country K (4 points) -> 2 points Country L (1 point) -> 1 or 0 points County M (1 point) -> 1 or 0 points Those highlighted in red text are those ties which could not be resolved by 4 (a) (i), (ii) or (iii). As a result of the random draw, User A was drawn first, meaning that user will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the highest value (the tie between Country B and C for 11 or 10 points). User B was drawn second meaning that user will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value (the tie between Country F and G for 7 or 6 points). The order will then be reversed so that User B will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the third highest value (the tie between Country I and J for 4 or 3 points). User A will finally be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the fourth highest value (the tie between Country L and M for 1 or 0 points). This procedure to break the unresolved ties will be used for national juries of any number with the first user drawn being given the right to break the unresolved tie of the highest value, the second user drawn being given the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value, third user the third highest tie, etc. reversing the order if need be when the order has completed one cycle. However, it should be noted that unresolved tie-breaks which require random draws will occur mostly in two-member juries since national juries with 3 or more members will likely resolve all ties through 4 (a) (i), (ii) or (iii). SECTION 5 - OVERALL SCOREBOARD TIE-BREAK PROCEDURES: 5. (a) In the event of a tie in the overall scoreboard between two or more nations, the following set of rules outlines how the tie-break will be resolved: (i) The nation which has received points from the greatest number of National Juries will be deemed the winner of the tie. (ii) If there is still a tie after 5 (a) (i), the nation which has received the greatest number of 12 points will be deemed the winner of the tie. (iii) If there is still a tie after 5 (a) (i), (ii), the nation which has received the greatest number of 11 points will be deemed the winner of the tie. If the tie remains deadlocked, the process will continue by counting the number of 10 points each nation received, 9 points, 8 points, and so on until the tie-break can be resolved. 5. (b) If there is still a tie in the overall scoreboard between two or more nations after 5 (a) (i), (ii) and (iii) have been implemented, those nations shall be deemed to have tied for position in the overall scoreboard. SECTION 6 - TEAM CHALLENGE FORMAT AND RULES: 6. (a) Each edition of the Totallympics International Song Contest will feature a Team Challenge competition. The main purpose of this team element is to further enhance the community spirit that is an integral feature of TISC events and to provide another means of encouraging users to interact with one another. (b) The TISC Team Challenge event may vary in format from one contest to the next. The nature of the format will be dependent on the number of participating nations. (c) Nations will be assigned to their team by random draw. (d) The ideal format is that there will be a minimum of 8 teams, each made up of 4 nations. However, if that is not possible, the teams will be formed from one of the following formats (listed in order of preference): (i) teams of 3 nations (ii) teams of 5 nations (iii) if it's not possible for each team to have the same number of nations, a special provision will be introduced (for example: power plays). (e) It is recommended that the teams shall be named after various cities/regions of the host country and combined with a nickname. For example, a contest in Brazil might feature teams called the Brasilia Capitals and Manaus Amazons. SECTION 7 - ELIGIBILITY, CONDUCT AND RESPONSIBILITY OF PARTICIPANTS: 7. (a) Any first time participant must have been registered on the forum at least 2 months before they take part in the contest. The date used to calculate the 2 months rule will be 2 months prior to the National Selection deadline. A first time participant may be allowed special dispensation to participate in TISC, even if they do not fulfill the 2-month rule criteria. However, in such circumstances, that user must have shown a high level of activity in the forum in terms of posts and presence. This special dispensation will be awarded on the agreement of Totallympics admin, namely Sindo, who will conduct all necessary verification checks and will be given final approval by the TISC management team, namely OlympicIRL and the host of that TISC edition. These rules are not designed to exclude, only to ensure TISC retains a distinct character, built upon a unique community atmosphere created by users of the forum. 7. (b) Participating users shall be respectful of the song choice of all nations once they fulfill all of the necessary eligibility requirements. 7. (c) Participating users must not reveal or give any indication as to their preferences or voting choices at any stage before the official announcement of the votes during the Grand Final. 7. (d) Participating users must not discuss private voting procedures with other members so as to ensure fairness is always in play and to ensure any suspense during the Grand Final is kept intact. 7. (e) Participating users must be respectful when posting and discussing with other members on the Totallympics International Song Contest Thread. 7. (f) If foul play is detected with respect to 7 (a), (b), (c), (d) or (e) at any stage before, during or after the contest, the TISC organising committee reserves the right to place the participation or result of that nation under review. SECTION 8 - HOSTING DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: 8. (a) The host organisation must allow a minimum of 3 weeks from the opening date for the national selection and the deadline to submit an entry. This is to give users enough time to see the thread, consider song and artist choices and submit their entries. 8. (b) The host organisation must allow a minimum of 2 weeks for National Juries to submit their votes during the National Jury voting phase. This is to allow jury members enough time to consider each song carefully before casting their votes. 8. (c) The host organiser(s) must submit their votes in advance of receiving votes from other National Juries by private message. The votes of the host(s) should be sent by private message to a neutral party after the national selection window has passed and before the national jury voting phase begins. 8. (d) The host organiser(s) must abide by the same rules that govern the participation of users in the Totallympics International Song Contest as outlined in Section 6. SECTION 9 - FUTURE HOSTING RIGHTS: 9. (a) Upon completion of the relevant song contest, the winning nation will automatically be awarded the rights to host the subsequent Totallympics International Song Contest 1 year later. 9. (b) If the winning nation wishes to decline the hosting duties, the runner-up of that edition will then be awarded the opportunity to accept or decline the hosting rights. If the runner-up also declines the hosting duties, the 3rd placed nation of that edition will have the opportunity to accept or decline the hosting rights. 9. (c) In the event that the hosting rights are declined by the top 3 ranked nations at the previous edition of the relevant TISC, an open bid process will be conducted in order to award the hosting rights. This process will be open to all candidates, first-time hosts as well as previous hosts. A random draw will take place with each candidate being awarded a number of tickets in the draw. The more tickets a candidate has entered, the better their chance of being selected as host. Here is the process for how the tickets will be distributed: Each candidate automatically awarded 1 ticket each in the draw. However, additional tickets awarded as follows - did not host in the previous 5 editions (+1 additional ticket) - did not host in the previous 10 editions (+1 additional ticket) - did not host previously (+2 additional tickets) - took part in the previous bidding process (+1 additional ticket). For first-time hosts, they will add an additional ticket for each edition they are unsuccessful for in bidding, thus increasing their chance slightly with each unsuccessful bid. This increase will only be available for first-time hosts. Additionally, if a first-time host missed 2 consecutive bidding campaigns, then their tickets no longer carry forward and they lose those additional tickets.

SECTION 1 - SONG CHOICE AND ELIGIBILITY: 1. (a) All songs must be released on or before December 31st, 2013, in keeping with TISC Open rules whereby songs released in the last 5 years are ineligible to compete. 1. (b) All songs must be ORIGINAL to the nation for which they are competing. In other words, if a song is a copy or cover of an original song by an artist from another nation, then it is ONLY permitted to participate for the nation of the artist who produced the original version. If the artist of the cover version is from the same nation as the original artist, then the cover version must fulfill rule 1(a) in order to be eligible to participate. 1. (c) Songs that competed at Eurovision shall be excluded from competing at TISC. However, songs which competed in a national final but were not put forward to represent their nation at Eurovision may be selected to compete at TISC. SECTION 2 - ARTIST CHOICE AND ELIGIBILITY: 2. (a) Artists chosen to represent a nation must have been born in or be of the same nationality as the nation for which they are participating OR they must have more or equal association with that nation. 2. (b) In the case of bands, at least 50% of the band must be born in or be of the same nationality as the nation for which they are participating OR they should have more or equal association with that nation. 2. (c) For the purposes of the Totallympics International Song Contest, the same concept of nationality as that used by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) will be adopted. So, for example, artists from Scotland must represent Great Britain, artists from Faroe Islands must represent Denmark, etc. SECTION 3 - NATIONAL JURY VOTING: 3. (a) National juries may consist of a single jury member OR a multi-member jury made up of two or more users from that nation. 3. (b) National juries must send their votes in SECRET (via private message) to the host organising member(s) of the song contest as requested during the designated voting window. 3. (c) Each jury member in a multi-member jury shall send their individual preferences in SECRET (via private message) to the host organising member(s). The votes from each of the members of the multi-member jury will be combined to form a single set of votes which will represent the overall voting preference of that national jury. In this way, the votes from each of the participating national juries, whether single or multi-member juries, will hold equal value or weight. 3. (d) National juries will use the following voting format: (i) Jury members will award points to their 12 favourite songs in ascending manner from points 1 through 12 (inclusive) with the first preference receiving a maximum score of 12 points, second preference receiving 11 points, third preference receiving 10 points, and so forth until the song of 12th preference which will receive a single point. 1st preference -> 12 points 2nd preference -> 11 points 3rd preference -> 10 points 4th preference -> 9 points 5th preference -> 8 points 6th preference -> 7 points 7th preference -> 6 points 8th preference -> 5 points 9th preference -> 4 points 10th preference -> 3 points 11th preference -> 2 points 12th preference -> 1 point (ii) In single member juries, these scores will subsequently represent the National Jury Vote of that nation. However, in multi-member juries, the votes of all the jury members from that nation will be combined to form a single set of points. The song which has received the most number of points from that national jury will be deemed to be the overall first preference choice of that jury and will receive the maximum score of 12 points; the song which has received the second highest number of points from that national jury will be deemed to be the overall second preference choice of that jury and will receive a score of 11 points, and so forth until the song which has received the 12th highest number of points which will receive a single point from that national jury. 3. (d) National juries must submit their votes by the official voting deadline as designated by the host organiser(s). National juries who fail to submit their votes within the required time frame will be disqualified from the contest. 3. (e) Any Nation which fails to participate in the voting process will be automatically disqualified from the contest. 3. (f) A random draw will take place in advance of the Grand Final to determine the order in which the National Juries will reveal their votes. This draw must be shown to be transparent and available to competing members should they wish to follow the result. The result of this draw must always be adhered to in order to preserve the random nature in which the voting will progress during the Grand Final. A National Jury may only request a "swap" in their designated voting position if, after the random draw, they have been assigned a voting slot outside of "reasonable hours". For the purpose of this contest, reasonable hours will be determined as anytime between 08:30-23:00 local time of that national jury. During the "swap" process, the host organiser will first look to make swaps between National Juries who are eligible for swaps after the random draw. SECTION 4 - NATIONAL JURY TIE-BREAK PROCEDURES: 4. (a) In the event of a tie in the combined votes of multi-member juries, the following set of rules outlines how the tie-break will be resolved: (i) The song which has received points from the greatest number of jury members will be deemed the winner of the tie. For example, take the following scenario.... Songs A, B, and C each received a combined score of 10 points after the results of each national jury member were combined and calculated. Song A received a single score of 10 points from one jury member, Song B received scores of 7 points and 3 points from two separate jury members and Song C received scores of 5 points, 3 points and 2 points from 3 separate jury members. All three songs received a total of 10 points, however, Song C is deemed to be the winner of the tie because a greater number of jury members voted for that song (3 members in this case). (ii) If the songs remain deadlocked after 4 (a) (i), the song which received the highest value score from an individual jury member will be deemed the winner of the tie. For example, take the following scenario.... Song A and Song B each received a combined score of 14 points after the results of each national jury member were combined and calculated. Song A received scores of 8+6 points while Song B received scores of 7+7 points. Song A will be deemed the winner of that tie since that song received a score of higher value (8 points) from one of the national jury members. (iii) If the songs remain deadlocked after 4 (a) (i) and (ii), jury members from that national jury who did not award any votes to any of the songs involved in the tie-break will be asked to break the tie. This tie-break rule can only ever be used to break ties in juries of 3 members or more and ONLY if there is a jury member who did not vote for any of the songs involved in the tie-break. (iv) After the procedures 4 (a) (i), (ii) and (iii) have been carried out, all outstanding ties within the votes of a national jury shall be resolved by carrying out a single random draw. The nature of this random draw shall be as follows: The names of each national jury member will be entered into a draw. Each name will be drawn. The first jury member drawn will be awarded the right to break the unresolved tie of highest value. The second jury member drawn will be awarded the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value. For example, take the following scenario.... there are two members of National Jury X. After the votes of User A and User B are combined and calculated the following situation arises: COUNTRY (Total points) -> Combined value Country A (24 points) -> 12 points Country B (21 points) -> 11 or 10 points Country C (21 points) -> 11 or 10 points Country D (18 points) -> 9 points Country E (16 points) -> 8 points Country F (13 points) -> 7 or 6 points Country G (13 points) -> 7 or 6 points Country H (10 points) -> 5 points Country I (7 points) -> 4 or 3 points County J (7 points) -> 4 or 3 points Country K (4 points) -> 2 points Country L (1 point) -> 1 or 0 points County M (1 point) -> 1 or 0 points Those highlighted in red text are those ties which could not be resolved by 4 (a) (i), (ii) or (iii). As a result of the random draw, User A was drawn first, meaning that user will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the highest value (the tie between Country B and C for 11 or 10 points). User B was drawn second meaning that user will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value (the tie between Country F and G for 7 or 6 points). The order will then be reversed so that User B will be given the right to break the unresolved tie of the third highest value (the tie between Country I and J for 4 or 3 points). User A will finally be given to break the unresolved tie of the fourth highest value (the tie between Country L and M for 1 or 0 points). This procedure to break the unresolved ties will be used for national juries of any number with the first user drawn being given the right to break the unresolved tie of the highest value, the second user drawn being given the right to break the unresolved tie of the second highest value, third user the third highest tie, etc. reversing the order if need be when the order has completed one cycle. However, it should be noted that unresolved tie-breaks which require random draws will occur mostly in two-member juries since national juries with 3 or more members will likely resolve all ties through 4 (a) (i), (ii) or (iii). SECTION 5 - OVERALL SCOREBOARD TIE-BREAK PROCEDURES: 5. (a) In the event of a tie in the overall scoreboard between two or more nations, the following set of rules outlines how the tie-break will be resolved: (i) The nation which has received points from the greatest number of National Juries will be deemed the winner of the tie. (ii) If there is still a tie after 5 (a) (i), the nation which has received the greatest number of 12 points will be deemed the winner of the tie. (iii) If there is still a tie after 5 (a) (i), (ii), the nation which has received the greatest number of 11 points will be deemed the winner of the tie. If the tie remains deadlocked, the process will continue by counting the number of 10 points each nation received, 9 points, 8 points, and so on until the tie-break can be resolved. 5. (b) If there is still a tie in the overall scoreboard between two or more nations after 5 (a) (i), (ii) and (iii) have been implemented, those nations shall be deemed to have tied for position in the overall scoreboard. SECTION 6 - TEAM CHALLENGE FORMAT AND RULES: 6. (a) Each edition of the Totallympics International Song Contest will feature a Team Challenge competition. The main purpose of this team element is to further enhance the community spirit that is an integral feature of TISC events and to provide another means of encouraging users to interact with one another. (b) The TISC Team Challenge event may vary in format from one contest to the next. The nature of the format will be dependent on the number of participating nations. (c) Nations will be assigned to their team by random draw. (d) The ideal format is that there will be a minimum of 8 teams, each made up of 4 nations. However, if that is not possible, the teams will be formed from one of the following formats (listed in order of preference): (i) teams of 3 nations (ii) teams of 5 nations (iii) if it's not possible for each team to have the same number of nations, a special provision will be introduced (for example: power plays). (e) It is recommended that the teams shall be named after various cities/regions of the host country and combined with a nickname. For example, a contest in Brazil might feature teams called the Brasilia Capitals and Manaus Amazons. SECTION 7 - ELIGIBILITY, CONDUCT AND RESPONSIBILITY OF PARTICIPANTS: 7. (a) Any first time participant must have been registered on the forum at least 2 months before they take part in the contest. The date used to calculate the 2 months rule will be 2 months prior to the National Selection deadline. A first time participant may be allowed special dispensation to participate in TISC, even if they do not fulfill the 2-month rule criteria. However, in such circumstances, that user must have shown a high level of activity in the forum in terms of posts and presence. These rules are not designed to exclude, only to ensure TISC retains a distinct character, built upon a unique community atmosphere created by users of the forum. 7. (b) Participating users shall be respectful of the song choice of all nations once they fulfill all of the necessary eligibility requirements. 7. (c) Participating users must not reveal or give any indication as to their preferences or voting choices at any stage before the official announcement of the votes during the Grand Final. 7. (d) Participating users must not discuss private voting procedures with other members so as to ensure fairness is always in play and to ensure any suspense during the Grand Final is kept intact. 7. (e) Participating users must be respectful when posting and discussing with other members on the Totallympics International Song Contest Thread. 7. (f) If foul play is detected with respect to 7 (a), (b), (c), (d) or (e) at any stage before, during or after the contest, the TISC organising committee reserves the right to place the participation or result of that nation under review. SECTION 8 - HOSTING DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: 8. (a) The host organisation must allow a minimum of 3 weeks from the opening date for the national selection and the deadline to submit an entry. This is to give users enough time to see the thread, consider song and artist choices and submit their entries. 8. (b) The host organisation must allow a minimum of 2 weeks for National Juries to submit their votes during the National Jury voting phase. This is to allow jury members enough time to consider each song carefully before casting their votes. 8. (c) The host organiser(s) must submit their votes in advance of receiving votes from other National Juries by private message. The votes of the host(s) should be sent by private message to a neutral party after the national selection window has passed and before the national jury voting phase begins. 8. (d) The host organiser(s) must abide by the same rules that govern the participation of users in the Totallympics International Song Contest as outlined in Section 6. SECTION 9 - FUTURE HOSTING RIGHTS: 9. (a) Upon completion of the relevant song contest, the winning nation will automatically be awarded the rights to host the subsequent Totallympics International Song Contest 1 year later. 9. (b) If the winning nation wishes to decline the hosting duties, a discussion will be raised in the relevant TISC thread to discuss hosting options and allowing users to put forward their bid to become the next hosts.