The Eurovision Song Contest 2022 was watched by 161 million people. This means that the numbers are down from 183 million in 2021, but the EBU have given a logical explanation for the decrease. They state their numbers suggest the viewing figures are 7 million up compared to the Rotterdam contest. Here’s why…
“We couldn’t be happier”, says Martin Österdahl
Martin Österdahl, the Executive Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest, is very happy with the current viewing figures. To the EBU, he has given the following statement:
We couldn’t be happier to see the success of the Eurovision Song Contest across all our Members’ channels and on our digital platforms this year.
Once again, we have seen the enormous popularity of the Contest among young audiences, some of whom are discovering the event for the first time. The Eurovision Song Contest truly has global appeal demonstrated by the millions watching in every territory on earth and millions more interacting on social media.
Martin Österdahl about the Eurovision viewing figures
The Big Five delivered good numbers this year. Italy saw its biggest audience since returning to the contest in 2011 with an average audience of 6.6 million. Spain had 6.8 million viewers, which means they’re up a whopping 86% on 2021. The largest audience in general came from the United Kingdom. Sam Ryder has caused a rebirth for Eurovision interest in his country, with 8.9 million viewers watching the contest. They take over the biggest market title from Germany.
Market shares are also important for the contest. In Iceland, 96,4% of the TV viewers watched Eurovision. The other Nordic countries follow closely: Norway (89,1%), Sweden (81,4%) and Finland (72,1%). A market share of more than 50% also occured in Armenia, Flanders, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Missing markets explain decrease
The current figures would suggest a drop of 12% compared to 2021. However, the fact that Russia did not participate nor broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 following their exclusion after the invasion of Ukraine, will account for a large part of this sum.
At the same time, the EBU did not receive viewing figures from several participating countries. The largest market on that list was eventual winners Ukraine. Others include, in alphabetical order, Albania, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Israel, Malta, Montenegro, North Macedonia and San Marino. They did not announce how many of these markets they managed to count for the contest last year.
The EBU went on to add that last year, the markets of Russia and Ukraine accounted for 29 million viewers in total. If you subtract those numbers from the 2021 figures, there would now have been an increase from 154 million to the current 161 million: a growth of 4,5%.
Online soar for Eurovision viewing figures
With TikTok becoming the new media partner for the Eurovision Song Contest, they gained exclusive access to the first rehearsals from Turin. In total, during the two Eurovision weeks, the official Eurovision account on TikTok had 189 million views. There was also success on Twitter, with over 8 million tweets with the #Eurovision hashtag, doubling the 2021 record.
On YouTube, over 42 million views were registred. Viewers from 232 countries or territories tuned in to Eurovision content. The official livestream on YouTube was watched by 7.6 million people – 50% more than last year. Of those views, 2.2 million came from Ukraine.
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