ORF Announce...As Austrian Representative

In an announcement which was only made public knowledge less than 24 hours beforehand, ORF have revealed today that Cesàr Sampson will represent Austria at the Eurovision Song Contest 2018.

The news was announced that the announcement would be made today by Eberhard Forcher, the man in charge of finding the 2017 representative, who went onto be Nathan Trent, as 9pm CET, it was announced that the act would be revealed during the popular breakfast show "Alarm Clock" which is broadcast on Ö3 which brings in roughly 2 million regular listeners across Austria. Eberhard Forcher was brought in by ORF to scout candidates for the broadcaster.

Cesàr is the fifth artist to be revealed as competing in Lisbon in May, they stand along side Saara Aalto, Laura Groeseneken, Waylon and AISEL, this is the second year ORF have decided to select internally as opposed to the national final format they had to select their 2015 and 2016 participants.

Cesár will be following in the footsteps of Nathan Trent, who represented Austria in 2017 with the song "Running On Air" despite Nathan's energy and character proving him to be on of the most likeable contestants in the contest amongst fans, he only finished 16th in the Grand Final with 93 points and more alarmingly, scoring nothing from the public portion of the voting. Under the old voting system Austria would've scored only nine points in the final from three countries, Portugal, Ireland and Denmark respectively.

He has also performed on the Eurovision stage in the past two contests, similar to Israel 2017 artist Imri, Cesàr has spent the last two years performing as a backing singer before being able to shine as a frontman, he featured on both of Bulgaria's entries since they returned in Eurovision 2016, with Poli Genova's "If Love Was A Crime" and Kristian Kostov's "Beautiful Mess" he also has performed as the lead singer for the groups Sympohnix International and Electric Chruch, as well as being a singer on the Austrian adaption of Dancing With The Stars.