X Factor, Sky's flagship talent show, kicks off its thirteenth edition tomorrow night. The competition for the best artist of 2019 is back with an almost completely new team of judges. This year, Mara Maionchi will be joined by Malika Ayane, the trapper Sfera Ebbasta and Samuel from Subsonica who are taking the place of the tried and tested Manuel Agnelli and Fedez, and Lodo Guenzi who last year replaced Asia Argento during the competition, which ended up in the midst of the “me too” scandal. Of all of them, Sfera Ebbasta is the one who has aroused the most curiosity and also the one who has aroused criticism after the Corinaldo massacre on 8 December, when 6 people were killed and 59 others were injured in the Lanterna Azzurra nightclub where the trapper was supposed to perform.
“What happened is a tragedy that has affected me and everyone. It is not something that will pass,” he said during the press conference to present the program. “There is no moment in which this situation will change or the emotions I feel will change, while I talk about it. Getting back to work in general has not been easy.” Alessandro Cattelan was also confirmed, for the ninth consecutive year at the helm of the program, from this season he joins the team of authors as creative producer of the show. “The jury has changed because we wanted to change it, it is something physiological and right. We wanted a cheerful, light, different, but also a little predatory, with totally different experiences, to represent the music scene that we like and that represents us,” said Lorenzo Mieli, CEO of Fremantle. After the initial casting phase – which brought together around 40.000 people, from Italy and abroad but also many second-generation Italians – the Auditions begin. With a new mechanism: those who get 4 yeses in this selection phase have immediate access to the next phase, the Bootcamp. For those who receive 3 yeses, however, the obstacle of a new selection carried out by the category judge, who on the basis of the still vacant places, reviewing the performances, must decide who to promote.
Special guests of the Auditions episodes will be Achille Lauro and the winner of the last edition: Anastasio. The enormous X Factor machine is ready to crown a new music talent, but to do so it had to travel 60 thousand kilometers around Italy and Europe. The Selections phase attracted around 8500 people in the public and involved 250 people between crew and technicians, 11 cameras in the studio and 7 crews simultaneously for backstage content. 10 kilometers of cables were laid, 7.000 meals were served and 22.500 bottles of organic water were consumed (and disposed of). According to what was found by the Eurobet Observatory, despite the odds for the winning judge being all at 3.75 (pending the pairing with the contestants), the fans' preferences are markedly in favor of Mara Maionchi who collected 76% of the bets. Malika Ayane is clearly far behind with 16%, Sfera Ebbasta with 6% and Samuel with just 2%. For Maionchi, this is a confirmation of what happened last year when, at the debut of the program and without any clues about the singers, she was leading the preferences with 57% of the total collection. The fact that she is the only judge with previous experience has probably strengthened the belief that the team she coaches will see the winner among her ranks.
Among the categories, preferences are going very decisively towards Under Women chosen by 52% of fans followed by Groups, Over and Under Men who are in last place. During the program there will be even more opportunities to test your talent scout skills. From September 12th you can bet on the possibility that the singers who become "trendy" during the auditions will be the winners while with the start of the live, from October 31st, in addition to being able to predict the eliminated contestant in the episode, 3 groups with 4 contestants each will be introduced and you can bet on the best of the single group but also try your hand at "Head to Head" having to guess who will be ranked first among various pairs of artists.
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