Europeans aren’t the only people who love the Eurovision Song Contest. Australian broadcaster SBS aired Eurovision on Sunday, May 27, and listened as ratings hit a high note. More than 500,000 people watched Loreen work her wind machine en route to victory with “Euphoria.” That represents a 9.4 per cent share of the viewing audience. Those are big numbers for SBS: the network normally averages a share between four and five percent. It just goes to show that you really can take Eurovision outside of Europe.
SBS also arranged a live televoting segment in which Australians could vote for their favorite. It’s no surprise that “Euphoria” proved to be the most popular song Down Under, too: The nation that brought the world Kylie Minogue knows good pop when it hears it. The Aussies also agreed with Europe that Russia’s Buranovskiye Babushki deserved to be runners-up with their song “Party for Everybody.”
The rest of the Australian scoreboard wasn’t as consistent with Europe’s. After the first two places, Australians began to re-order the entries pretty dramatically. Beyond Mother Russia, Eastern European countries didn’t go down as well. For example Serbia (third place), Azerbaijan (fourth place) and Albania (fifth place) only finished 16th, 24th and 23rd in Australia. In contrast Jedward achieved third place, which shows that their brand of pop still carries as much weight Down Under as it did in 2011 when they first appeared at the ESC.
Complete Results
1. Sweden 72,186 televotes
2. Russia 55,270
3. Ireland 50,314
4. Italy 36,130
5. Denmark 33,638
6. Cyprus 27,538
7. Germany 24,958
8. Greece 22,328
9. Ukraine 22,172
10.Iceland 21,430
11.Moldova 21,220
12.Malta 20,878
13.Turkey 20,402
14.FYR Macedonia 18,842
15.Norway 17,694
16.Serbia 17,160
17.Lithuania 15,472
18.Spain 14,164
19.Romania 13,424
20.United Kingdom 12,862
21.France 12,150
22.Estonia 11,824
23.Albania 10,902
24.Azerbaijan 9,400
25.Bosnia & Herzegovina 8,776
26.Hungary 7,336
