With an average of 61 million viewers, and a reach of 195 million viewers, this year’s Eurovision Song Contest has performed exceptionally well in the modern TV environment.
The headline figure of 195 million is going to be the one that will lead the marketing and PR efforts for the Sixtieth Anniversary Contest. Let’s give that a bit of context:
The 2012 World Cup Final: Reach of 638 million.
The 2013 Champions League Final: Reach of 360 million.
The Royal Wedding Of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Miss Catherine Middleton: Reach of 161 million
Taking the recent Champions League Final (2013/14) their reach is projected to be 380 million, with an average viewership of 165 million.
For the Eurovision Song Contest, the only reach figure we can compare the 2014 Contest is 2013’s reach, which was 180 million.
The 2012 Song Contest used a different methodology to calculate the combined viewership. The 2012 numbers compare favourably with those published by eurovision.tv today. Baku 2012 had an average of 64 million people watching the Grand Final, with 19.4 million and 19.6 million for the two semi-finals respectively. This compares to an average of 55 million for the 2013 Grand Final and 61 million watching the 2014 Grand Final.
The Eurovision 2014 Trophy (photo: Sander Hesterman / EBU)
We would be hesitant to draw too many comparisons to previous Contests without fully understanding the methods and definitions of ‘watching’ used not just by the EBU, but also by each broadcaster. You would also have to account for countries who did not take part in the 2014 Contest (such as Turkey and Serbia), who would have a noticeable impact on viewership.
Nevertheless, these are strong number in a multi-channel environment which has far more choice than decades past where the Song Contest could command audiences in the hundreds of millions.
I’ll be very surprised if it didn’t crack 200m+ people worldwide, for this years contest. (Based on raw collective ratings from around the world..)
Don’t forget too, the number of people who watched it on the internet and those who also watched millions of hours of Eurovision 2014 videos on YouTube.
I’m currently in Thailand, so watched the competition the day after on Eurovision’s website. I’ve since watched at least 100 hours worth of videos and interviews on YouTube as well, and have Conchita’s videos running practically non-stop.
Can’t get enough of it, and there are millions of others just like me all over the world who can’t either 🙂
By the way, I’ve probably watched about 35 Eurovision contests over the years and this year’s was, by far, the best I’ve ever seen. Awesome songs, incredible staging, a fabulous production by Denmark and, of course, the lovely Conchita winning. Couldn’t have been a better competition. Thanks so much! 🙂