Unsurprisingly, the world’s biggest music event, the Eurovision Song Contest, has once again monopolized the interest of viewers in Europe, Australia and beyond. Reportedly with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), a total of 182 million viewers tuned in to the live show of the Grand Final!

This might mean a reduction of 4 million viewers after the 2018 edition in Lisbon, however, it’s quite important that the show did not air in the United States and in China this year. The contest delivered an average viewing percentage of 36.7%, which is more than double the average prime-time viewing share for the same group of channels (16.7%).

The Netherlands

To begin with, in the winning country of the Netherlands, the contest achieved a TV audience share of 73.4% for NPO/AVROTROS, the highest share since 2014, when the country ended up in runner-up position in the final.

Israel

When it comes to the host country Israel, KAN recorded a 24% up on last year’s audience share, with a percentage of 63.2% and an average of 1.3 million viewers. These are the highest viewing rates for Israel, since their last hosting in 1999 in Jerusalem.

Italy

This year’s runner-up, Italy, also enjoyed very satisfying audience ratings, their second best since 2011, when the country of the Meditteranean returned to the Eurovision extravaganza. RAI reported an average of 3.4 million viewers, 5% more than in 2018.

Iceland

Almost all Icelanders watched Eurovision! The island of North Atlantic, Iceland, which is already known for the highest TV ratings than any other participating nation (more than 90% every year), recorded the incredible percentage of 98.4% (their second highest share after a 98.6% in 2014). Surely the return of Iceland to the final after 5 years played an important role in already extraordinarily high viewing rates.

Switzerland

Switzerland is in the same wavelength, as they qualified to the Grand Final for the first time in five years, and they also achieved their most successful result in a total of 26 years. The nation’s German-speaking broadcaster SRF recorded a percentage of 49.6% and 0.7 million viewers, the most satisfying rates since the 2006 edition. RTS and RSI also managed to double their shares.

Germany

The highest average viewing figures of any market were achieved in Europe’s most populous country, Germany, with 7.6 million viewers attending the contest.

YouTube and young audiences

YouTube has been another success! The official Eurovision channel enjoyed 40 million online viewers from 225 territories throughout the entire Eurovision week, while 72% of live show viewing was by the under 35s. This can showcase the strong resonance of competition to younger audiences. This can also be proven by the viewing rates among the ages 17 to 24, which delivered an average of 45.3% audience share in 40 markets. This is reportedly 2 percentage points higher than in 2018 and four times higher than the broadcast channels average (11.7%).

Source: EBU

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