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TikTok and Eurovision: A Game-changing Collaboration Written by on April 29, 2022

An official collaboration between the EBU and TikTok means that behind the scenes coverage, live streams and rehearsal coverage will be coming to the platform. But with TikTok pushing Eurovision content for the next month, will there be a wider impact? Ben Robertson investigates.

It was revealed in the build up to the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest that an official collaboration now exists between the European Broadcasting Union and the social media platform TikTok. This collaboration sees TikTok becoming the ‘Official Entertainment Platform’ of the Song Contest.

While at the time of writing this partnership’s full deck of cards has yet to be revealed, we are promised “unprecedented access” to the Song Contest according to Executive Producer Martin Österdahl. What is teased already includes dedicated TikTok programming, behind the scenes access and official playlists, all the while creating more “exclusive and engaging content”.

However it is worth noting that this is far more than just a new social media platform for the EBU to spread news of the Contest. TikTok itself will be involved in the production across the continent, with content being produced across different European nations to celebrate each entry and a separate ‘content hub’ making it easier for users to create Eurovision content.

The main headline though is undoubtedly the fact that there will be an official broadcast of the three Eurovision live shows via TikTok. TikTok videos are generally viewed on mobiles and designed to be viewed vertically. This modern aspect filter will be used in these official broadcasts to simultaneously broadcast the live TV feed of the show with footage from backstage.

While we don’t know the full scale that this partnership will entail, there’s reason to think that this is a huge deal for the Eurovision Song Contest.

The Allure Of The TikTok Partnership

It will surprise few of you to realise that Eurovision is already a huge deal on TikTok – and last year’s edition from Rotterdam saw 1.4 billion views on the hashtag #Eurovision2021.

However the appeal of TikTok to the EBU isn’t just the views but also the demographics that it reaches. While the Song Contest’s core fanbase has been predominantly male (an Aussievision Fan Survey from 2019 had 66% of participants declare their identity as male) the modern Song Contest strives for an increasingly diverse fanbase. TikTok is a social media app where the majority of users are female, in contrast to Facebook and YouTube which lean male.

Furthermore it will be of little surprise to note that TikTok users trend younger, with almost half of all users being in the 18-24 age bracket. In targeting this group the Eurovision Song Contest is aiming to hit one of the biggest groups of consumer interest – making these consumers fans might make them fans for the next fifty years or more. In addition this is a group less likely to be members of organisations such as OGAE and likely newer to the Song Contest.

But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t already engaged with the idea of Eurovision. The success of the last two winners of Eurovision internationally, Måneskin and Duncan Lawrence, came about significantly because of the way their music spread via TikTok. This next generation of Eurovision fan sees the Song Contest in a light that is more (and I use a lot of poetic licence in saying this) ‘cool’ than it ever was. A marketing campaign getting these viewers to find the next Måneskin or Duncan Lawrence holds up in a way the Song Contest may have never done in its 66 year existence.

An EBU report showed that young people were watching 20% less public service television compared to other age groups, a number that has dropped by 11% from 2015 to 2020. With young people consuming significantly less from public service television, the Eurovision Song Contest may be one of the few ways public service broadcasting stays relevant to the next generation of media consumers.

Let’s not ignore as well the benefits that the Eurovision Song Contest collaboration is for TikTok itself. While it may seem like it is all over Western media as the next big thing, the truth is that TikTok is significantly larger in other parts of the world. By raw number of users it is the USA, Indonesia and Brazil that make up the top three countries globally (this ignores its Chinese sister Douyin), while statistics on reach percentage suggest the app is most popular in the Middle East.

The European market is thus one that TikTok has been heavily targeting. A turnover increase of 545% in the region from 2020 to 2021 is evidence of this as TikTok explained they have “continued to invest heavily in building a solid foundation for the long term success of the platform.” Partnerships like this targeting one of their growth areas of the planet seem like smart choices.

It is a win-win situation for both the EBU and for TikTok.

How TikTok Changes The Social Media Landscape

A quick search of that #Eurovision2021 hashtag finds seemingly simple videos with incredible viewing figures – a video reviewing the ten countries that are most likely to win Eurovision has over 1 million views, as does one recapping the last seven years of Italian Eurovision history.

Now that is not to downplay the slickness of this video content, but TikTok as a platform is arguably the strongest at allowing content to go viral and gain views rapidly. Part of this is the structure of content that TikTok is famed for – short form video – allowing a viewer to consume a higher number of videos than they could if videos were longer.

What is especially potent about TikTok is how it keeps people on the app for longer. A 2019 study showed that the average visit to Facebook’s app was under five minutes, with Twitter’s around three and a half minutes and Instagram’s under three minutes. The TikTok app retains viewer’s attention for longer and the average visit to the app is over ten minutes.

Not only are people using the app for longer, but those users are also becoming more engaged with content on TikTok. The engagement rate is a key statistic for marketers and influencers – it is the measure that users interact with the content in question, by liking, sharing, commenting or clicking through to related links or hashtags. TikTok engagement is many times larger than its competitors, a fact that is somewhat hard to justify why. One theory is that TikTok as a platform varies significantly to those competitors, with content that is “unique and different”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L19zEYe5U4&ab_channel=HiEurovision%21

The other key statistic behind TikTok videos is the reach of them – that is the ability to get the video recommended to others. Now many would love to crack the code of the TikTok algorithm, but evidence points to a video’s completion rate, the number of people who watch the full length of the video, as a key statistic to be recommended to new users. This weighting to completion rate means that if a video is deemed ‘good’ by the algorithm, it is aggressively pushed to others. This makes it possible for videos to go viral quicker and easier than TikTok’s competitors – pushing video content out well beyond the usual viewers of the channel. It is not unusual in the world of TikTok for creators to have one or two videos with out-of-proportion high view counts compared the rest of their content. Those that can master a collection of such videos become TikTok sensations.

In the quest for the Eurovision Song Contest to bring in new viewers for the 10th, 12th and 14th May this is a very desirable characteristic. To its core audience I can imagine backstage clips and especially sneak peeks of rehearsal footage to not just be must watch content, but also content that is heavily commented on, shared, and watched to its completion. Even without the assistance that TikTok is going to give in highlighting Eurovision content this May, this platform is likely the best for pushing these types of videos out to people who wouldn’t normally engage.

There’s every chance that this year the whole Eurovision rehearsal bandwagon doesn’t just get the Eurovision community excited but also beyond our traditional circles to the next generation of Eurovision fans. Today’s social media provides content less by what you search and seek out yourself, but what is recommended to you. It appears there is no greater platform for doing just that.

TikTok And A Competitive Song Contest

Of course the class of 2022 possesses a plethora of tech-savvy artists who are already well versed in the tips and tricks to spread their creations online. With a median age of 26 plenty of their songs have moments that are already proving huge on the platform. A review in mid-March of the 2022 Eurovision songs on TikTok on ESCXtra found that already by then the Italian, Ukrainian and Serbian songs had been used over ten thousand times as the sound for different videos, with Latvia and Sweden close behind.

We can explain away the dominance of the top two here by the sheer fact that ‘Brividi’ has been a hit of record breaking proportions in Italy and that ‘Stefania’ is heavily used as background music in videos posted about the war in Ukraine.

However those songs close behind in positions 3 to 5 are particularly interesting as their order doesn’t necessarily reflect on the songs tipped by the fan community, betting odds or any other proxy we choose to use in this speculation part of the Song Contest cycle. In these cases content replicating Konstrakta’s iconic hand washinghighlighting the epic opening line to ‘Eat Your Salad’ or focusing on the emotional heartbreak lyrics of ‘Hold Me Closer (similar to how ‘Arcade’ was used on the platform post 2019) appear to be the big winners with hundreds of thousands if not millions of views.

What TikTok videos like these can do is generate an undercurrent of support for songs and artists in ways that our conventional Eurovision media and even social media may miss. Rather than joining forums or groups or following hashtags where you have to instigate your choices, these videos can spread out into the wider non-Eurovision following world and gain traction there. It’s realistic that as TikTok shines a light on the Song Contest in May that this type of content brings in not just viewers, but also voters who have pre-determined their favourites purely from a snippet of video content.

And while national finals have had TikTok sensations in the past, and Australia Decides this year even took one qualifier in via a selection through the platform, there’s only one artist in this year’s competition who has built a superstar career from it.

The United Kingdom’s Sam Ryder.

With a whopping 12.3 million followers (over ten times any other artists in Eurovision 2022) and over 100 million likes on his videos, it was TikTok that took Sam Ryder from effectively zero to national hero. There’s a few reasons we can see with hindsight that TikTok would be perfect for his catapult to stardom. Sam’s iconic long hair and beard make him instantly recognisable. Despite the expanded ten minute limit on TikTok videos Sam keeps his content short so viewers complete it. In addition his out-of-this-world vocals mesmerise the audience and people stay until the last possible second just to hear what notes he can pull off.

While ‘Space Man’ wasn’t in the list of five songs above (he was 11th at that time), it is worth noting that ‘Space Man’ today does feature on one clip that is now in the eight figure category for number of views. If there is an artist who already has the reach and knows how to play the TikTok merry-go-round it is Sam Ryder. More than anybody else one has to expect he will be the centre of attention for many from Chisinau to Haverfordwest by May 14th.

The unknown in all of this is how big this TikTok collaboration will explode in May, will the collaboration be a drop in the ocean of Eurovision coverage or the next big thing? The way I see it this could be the catalyst to the biggest change in not just viewership but also voting demographics that we’ve had in the Song Contest for years. We may be watching the results fly in on the early hours of May 17th in utter bewilderment because we’ve missed the strength of the newest voting bloc to hit the scene.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

About The Author: Ben Robertson

Ben Robertson has attended 23 National Finals in the world of Eurovision. With that experience behind him he writes for ESC Insight with his analysis and opinions about anything and everything Eurovision Song Contest that is worth telling.

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