Reactions to the simplistic performance were mixed. The Telegraph's Charlotte Runcie found that "the song deserves to do well, but the pared-back staging was in danger of being forgettable". Heidi Stephens, reporter for The Guardian, found the Dutch performance "bleak, but hauntingly beautiful". Writing for The Independent, Rob Holley found that Arcade was well performed, and although he feared that the performance was underwhelming for Eurovision standards, he thought The Netherlands were the biggest contenders for victory. BBC's commentator for the semi-finals Rylan Clark-Neal put The Netherlands in his top 5. During the Eurovision week, The Netherlands remained a favourite to win the competition, according to the bookmakers; shortly before the contest's final, their chances of winning were as high as 46 percent. In the Grand Final, Duncan Laurence was drawn to perform in the first half of the show, on spot 12. Arcade received the maximum score of 12 points from six national juries, and twice from national audiences. The Netherlands were closely followed by North Macedonia, Sweden and Italy during the jury vote and the latter during the televoting sequence, but ended up winning the Eurovision Song Contest with 492 points. Afer the Belarusian jury's original verdicts were discarded, their final number of points was 498. It was the first Eurovision victory for the country since 1975, when Teach-In won for The Netherlands with Ding-a-dong.