It's official! The Viewing Figures Have Been Released

It has been over 2 weeks since the Eurovision final concluded, and now the European Broadcasting Union have officially released the viewing figures for the contest. The two semi finals, and the final viewing figures were 182 million people in total. An impressive amount when you consider it is nearly double that of America's Super Bowl (which is one of the worlds largest sporting broadcasts), however last years contest had over 200 million viewers, which is nearly 20 million less. Where did the viewers go?

People following the lead up to the final could fail to notice the on going political crisis between Ukraine and Russia, which led to the Russian artist Julia Samoylova being banned from performing in Kyiv. This led to Russia pulling out of the contest, and refusing to broadcast the event. This could be seen as one of the reasons as to why the viewers tuned out. Each individual country may have specific reasons if figures were down on the night. Check out our previous article on the viewing figures:

https://www.eurovoxx.net/single-post/2017/05/18/The-Viewing-Figues-Were-People-Watching

However, there were other notable figures that can be counted that can be seen as a positive, and show that the 2017 contest figures were just a wobble. Iceland is the perfect example, although SVALA failed to lead the nation to the final, a staggering 98% of the available population tuned in. Clearly showing its popularity there.

Ukraine had its best viewing figures since 2009 with a total of 1.5 million. This is to be expected considering they were host nations. Portugal the winners of the contest also saw a rise in their figures. 1.4 million tuned in to see Salvador win, being hosts next year will likely see another increase in viewing figures. Italy, were the bookies favourites for months before, but although Francesco failed to capitalise on this, his popularity ensured 3.6 million tuned in. Kristian from Bulgaria gave Bulgaria their best result to date, gaining second position, this saw their best viewing figures ever of 650,000 being reached. Of the big 5 the German Broadcaster came top with over 7 million tuning in, followed by the United Kingdom.

What is impressive is that those tuning in online, and streaming the contest live doubled from 2016, with over 6 million. Although, not as high as the T.V figures the fact that these figures depicted people watching from over 233 nations, is particularly impressive. Eurovision is truly global. Finally, the demographics show there has been a magnificent rise of the younger generation. of the 42 countries the 15-24 year olds made up 43.9% of the viewing public. This is good for EBU, if they want the contest to continue into the future it is this demographic they need to capture.

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