The figures are out! Over the course of the 3 live shows for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest, a total of 186 million viewers tuned in to the much-loved competition across 42 markets.

Earlier this month, the world’s largest music competition took place in the host city of Lisbon, in which a total of 43 countries competed at the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest.

Across the globe, viewers tuned in to watch the competition and see their own country, as well as their favourites, competing at the event, reaching a grand total of 186 million viewers altogether.

Viewing figures for the Grand Final remained similar to 2017, receiving an average audience share of 35.8%.

Statistics per country

Today, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) released the viewing figure details for the countries whose figures stood out during the 2018 competition in Portugal. Notably:

• Israel received their largest audience since 2005, averaging 1 million viewers during the Grand Final, accounting for 50.9% of the Israeli television viewings;
• Cyprus had their highest figures since 2003, in which 250 thousand viewers tuned in to the competition, accounting for 77.4% of the Cypriot views;
• Germany saw their highest average of viewing figures for the 8th consecutive year, receiving 7.7 million viewers;
• The United Kingdom’s figures were up by 5% on 2017, with an average of 7 million viewers tuning in;
• France received their highest viewing figures since 2009, up 10% to 2017 and gaining 5.2 million viewers;
• Spain almost doubled their viewers to their 2017 figures, gaining a 42.2% share with 6.4 million viewers;
• Portugal’s figures went up by 10% on 2017, with 1.5 million viewers tuning in and gaining a 36.4% audience share, the highest since 2008;
• As always, Iceland delivered the highest share of the viewers of all the markets, gathering an impressive 95.3% share of the viewing figures.

The appeal to younger viewers grew in 2018, in which a total of 43.1% of 15-24 year olds watched the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest across 42 markets, almost 4 times higher than the average of 10.6%.

Figures were also up by almost 4 times more for the children and young adult groups, with children between 4-15 years providing 35.1% of the audience whilst young adults aged 25-34 years gathered 35.4%.

Through the official Eurovision YouTube channel, a total of 6.6 million live streaming sessions in 198 territories across the 3 live shows were gathered, an increase of 10% from 2018. The Grand Final saw 2.2 million unique viewers tuning in.

Israel won the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest