Sam Bailey crowned 2013 X Factor winner!

Sam Bailey has won this year’s X Factor and now enters the race to become 2013's Official Christmas Number 1.

Sam Bailey has fought off tough competition from fellow finalist Nicholas McDonald to win the 2013 series of the X Factor.

36 year-old former prison officer put in the performance of her life in front of 10,000 fans at London’s Wembley Arena earlier this evening (Sunday, December 15), with millions more watching the series’ finale live at home on ITV 1.

Sam, who hails from Leicestershire, is now set to enter the race to become the Official Christmas Number 1 with her cover of Demi Lovato's Skyscraper. The track, which was originally released in the US in 2011, peaked at Number 7 on the UK's Official Singles Chart earlier this year, largely thanks to it being featured on the current series of the X Factor. Sam's version will be on sale through various digital retailers later this evening. A CD version of the single is currently being pressed, and is set to go on sale in record shops and supermarkets on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week. The show have pledged to donate 100% of the proceeds from this year's winner's single to Great Ormond Street Children's Charity and Together For Short Lives.

Now in its tenth year, X Factor has dominated the Christmas singles market for the past decade, with the show’s winners being responsible for five out of the last eight Christmas Number 1s. However, due to TV scheduling conflicts, 2011 winners Little Mix, and 2012 winner James Arthur, released their singles the week before the annual chart battle was set to begin.

Despite the X Factor’s strong track record, and large fan base, scoring a Number 1 single at Christmas is never guaranteed. In 2009, Joe McElderry became the first X Factor winner to lose a Christmas chart race after going head-to-head with a  social media campaign to get Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name to the festive chart summit.

This year there are a number of social media campaigns to get classic tracks from the likes of AC/DC and Altern 8 to the top of the Official Singles Chart this Christmas, as well as several charity releases from the likes of The Fish Wives Choir, 11-year-old Jack Topping and the cast of The Big Reunion, to name but a few.

“Not even Santa can tell you who’ll be Number 1 this Christmas,” says the Official Charts Company’s Chief Executive, Martin Talbot. “It’s all down to the record-buying British public. The beauty of every Number 1 race is that anything can happen, and at Christmas, it can be even more unpredictable as Rage Against The Machine proved four years ago.”

The cut-off point for sales to be counted towards this year’s Official Christmas Number 1 is midnight next Saturday night (December 21). The Official Christmas Singles Chart Top 40 will then be counted down on BBC Radio 1’s Official Chart Show with Jameela Jamil and Scott Mills between 4 and 7pm next Sunday (December 22), with the full Top 100 posted on www.officialcharts.com at 7pm.