The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has revealed that 182 million viewers — spread among the 42 participating countries — tuned in to both semi-finals and the grand final of Eurovision 2017.
This is considerably lower than last year’s total of 204 million viewers, owing to Russia’s withdrawal from the competition and their refusal to broadcast all three live shows.
Despite the lower viewing figures, the grand final of Eurovision 2017 received an audience share of 36.2% — the same as in 2016. Online viewing for all three live shows are also on the up, with six million hits across 233 territories through the official Eurovision YouTube channel, with a total of 8.5 million on-demands requests.
Eurovision 2017 viewing figures
Host country Ukraine received their highest viewing share for a Eurovision grand final since 2009. A total of 1.5 million viewers watched O.Torvald rock out on home soil, with an audience share of 18.8%.
Eventual winner Portugal also drew its biggest audience since 2008. An average of 1.4 million viewers watched Salvador Sobral sing his way to Eurovision glory, giving broadcaster RTP a 32.5% audience share.
Kristian Kostov’s second place finish was watched by 650,000 people, Bulgaria’s highest audience share since 2003. That represents a 39.4% share.
Svala may have missed out on the grand final, but Iceland continued to deliver the largest audience share from the 42 participating countries at 98%. Around 150,000 viewers — a 16% increase from last year’s contest — marks their highest viewing figures since Pollapönk made the final in Copenhagen in 2014.
Pre-contest favourites Italy enjoyed its best audience share since their Eurovision return in 2011 with 3.6 million viewers, an increase of 15% from 2016.
Germany only narrowly avoided finishing bottom of the table again. But they can cheer the fact their 7.8 million viewers resulted in their highest average viewing figures for an eighth year in a row.
Photo: Andres Putting (EBU)
If official YouTube livestream would be available in the USA the number would have been much higher! Last year I was watching with no issues and this year I had to use VPN app to change my location to watch it. Come on, EBU!
I am from South Africa and this was the first year that I watched the grand final live on YouTube… I do not have internet access at home, so I traveled one hour away from my home to my place of work. It was 14 degrees Celsius that day and we were experiencing heavy rains. I carried a blanket and food and watched the show from 9pm till after the winner’s press conference at like 2am. I then slept in my office till daybreak and then went home. It was completely worth it! 🙂
wow, that is so touching!!
I cross my fingers for you, that one day, you will make it to the live-event!!
(if it is in germany (haha) you can be my guest!)
best wishes from germany
Hehe that is so sweet! Thank you. Although given Germany’s recent results at ESC, I may be dead before then lol jokes. I actually would love for Germany to host again. 2011 was one of the best contests. Did you attend that year? What’s it like to be in the audience? I can just imagine the energy! 🙂
In 2010 “The cumulative amount of viewers was 108.2 million”, with 73 million watching the final, “across the 44 nations where it was broadcast” according to EBU.
Now in 2017 EBU says Eurovision “was seen by over 180 million viewers … across 42 markets”.
This increase seems almost unbelievable to me. Am I missing something? Or have the Eurovision brand grown this rapidly?
Sources:
https://eurovision.tv/story/eurovision-2010-ratings-follow-trend-of-2007-2008
https://eurovision.tv/story/Eurovision-2017-reaches-more-than-180-million
Remember now they have: China, Australia, Kazakhstan & US now. Though not that many of them watched it but it accounts for some of the views.
The numbers for the US are insignificant, 64,000. Australia has anything up to 3 million viewers in total depending on how you count. Still doesn’t make much of a difference. I’m curious about Kaza and China.
If these numbers only include viewers that watched on television, then you can give your curioisity up on China. Chinese can watch Eurovision live on the official site of Mongo TV, the broadcast channel of China, online, not on TV due to our media policy (I mean, Eurovision is overall too open to the majority of Chinese people). Eurovision has many fans in China, and the number is keeping increasing year by year. But it’s really not a big event here, most Chinese people know nothing about Eurovision and definitely not appreciate it, and few people are willing to get… Read more »
I was so frustrated that the EBU blocked Eurovision 2017 and 2016 videos to Brazil (and other non-European countries as well, I have heard)!
Why did they do that? Why couldn’t we watch it live directly on their YouTube channel?
Someone, please explain! Why?
I know most Brazilians are oblivious to the existence of such a contest, but there are still a few who do know that Eurovision exists and would like to watch it live, in spite of not being in Europe when it is broadcast!
I’m glad they did it. There are a lot of latin american trolls, especially brazillians. We have enough already.
Next time you can try SVT
You beat me to it. I went to SVT to watch the Grand Final. Here in the U.S., not only did the copyright secret police block the live feed to YouTube for the Grand Final, but they also blocked the semis; and even now the links to the recorded and now-completed semis AND final STILL don’t appear at the site. I went to ProxFree to find another YouTube site (be it the U.K., FRA, NED or GER) to watch the semis and put everything in my collection once the contest was over.
Only a little correction:
German viewing figures were the lowest since 8 years. Last year 9.33 million Germans watched the final.
At least that’s what they write here: https://www.rollingstone.de/eurovision-song-contest-quoten-sinken-1246503/
I know that the viewing figures where down in the UK again. It doesnt help that the eurovision song contest went head to head with Britains got talent again which has been getting around 9-10 million viewers each week.
That’s normal.
Russia was out, so viewers there are not countred, so we come to the number of 182 million people.
I m suprised that no many viewers in Bulgaria watch Eurovison final, because Bulgaria was one of favorite to won contest and because they had good result also in 2014.
In Iceland rating is always high for Eurovision. I think record is 1987 when almost everyone in Iceland watch Eurovision.
It coz thay probs no is a fix xc
That is because No One watches the BNT (bulgarian national television). The only people that actually still know it exists are the 60+ years old. BNT has never had such a huge (for them) audience. Me and all other Bulgarians i know watch the show online. And vote via the app.
Is the same in Romania. Very few people watch TVR. Like you I watch the show online.
mistake 2016 not 2014.
I watched online on YouTube. Possibly this wasn’t authorised? I don’t know. I did notice that on the night Wiwibloggs was broken for most of the time. I think that’s something you guys definitely have to sort out.
This always happens. It is always down on the day and moment of the finals.
It takes a day or two after the finals for it to stop crashing. I don’t think paying a higher fee for 1/2 days of the year is worthy to upgrade a service for lol
Probably because of the huge amount of people in the blog at that time.
Without the geoblock issue on Youtube, it would have been much higher (also for the videos on the channel).
I think the jury and the increasing quality of the entries are helping to push the views higher. Most people don’t want to watch a noisy circus like it was 10 years ago.
And ofc qualified countries will probably have better viewing figure.
You’re so wrong. People prefer being entertained, so everyone would rather have circus entries than useless/bland songs made for the sake of showing off vocals. Another thing the public wants is to see different cultures, here in Italy people always complain when other countries sing in English and the live tweets in the semi-final praised Portugal for being the only country to sing in an another language.
#celebratediversity
English songs should be considered equal to other language songs!!
Not when they all end up sounding the same. Most of the 2016 entries could literally represent any country, the viewers here weren’t happy at all. The fact that Portugal won and Italy and Hungary were top 10, as well as Belarus’ qualification and France’s success with the public, should bring back more national languages next year.
Yup…..all languages are welcome…..but the essence of ESC is that the music should matter not the language…..so a song in Hindi should be as good as one in English/french…..not higher not lower.
Actually the essence of ESC is to celebrate each country musical culture, but it has a become a senseless and blind pursuit for public “attention” in order to win a trophy.
The problem isn’t so much that almost every country is singing in english – many countries have already developed some musical culture in english. The problem is that many of the songs that go to ESC have little connection with what the musicians are producing for themselves.
Exactly, some entrants have literally zero artistic input in their entry. Some, like Robin Bengtsson, are mere singers who are given a song, a choreo, and just execute it. But some others have all the capabilities to produce an amazing song on their own, and yet their broadcaster won’t let them. I love the Hungarians for submitting so many songs in their unintelligible language in their national finals (and look at the results – Kedvesem 8th in televote and Origo 7th in televote). Many other countries should take notes.
The views before the Eurovision “dark age”, ~2002-2008, weren’t very good, plus Italy withdraw, then Austria and many others threatened to do the same. If you look at the recent numbers, views in 2014<2015<2016.
People want to see "funny acts" for sure (like Romania and Croatia this year), but who won the televoting this year and in the past few years? Joke acts?
Some people miss the Eurovision of 10 years ago, but quality brings a new audience to the show.
According to Wikipedia (the reference is there), Celine Dion performed her winner song for 600 million viewers in 1988.
If you want “quality” then go to the opera, I guess. The Eurovision is supposed to be fun, so there’s a little bit of everything. Most years in the televote-only era had a couple of troll entries, but we got some bizarre things this year as well. The juries kill all the fun and only cause unneeded drama. The public should have the word.
Yes, because only opera can be good…
well…following your reasoning, I’d suggest that you should go to the circus instead.
Why did you call 2002-2008 the Eurovision dark age?
It was just a term. That period was very different from all the others in Eurovision’s history. The music quality decreased a lot and the show was mostly like a circus.
Yes, a bit of fun is alright but a whole contest built on fun? A whole contest built on the likes of entries such as those from Romania or Croatia will soon devalue the ESC bransch and turn it back into the kitsch fest it used to be. How is that celebrating cultures?
It’s an entertainment program but that doesn’t mean it should be turned into a circus act. There should be room for serious and silly, a healthy balance.
There are enough circuses out there, don’t turn ESC into one.
That’s what I said, a little bit of everything is welcome. Not all circus acts, but not all snoozefests either.
Most definitely–I’m sure SVT’s online viewership were really high considering we Americans had to watch the Semifinals there instead of the official YouTube channel. In a way, I would prefer Logo TV and America to stay out of Eurovision since it’s causing problems with the geoblocking (I’m pretty sure that’s what’s causing it), but I would think online streamed content should be available freely, esp. if they’re going to keep the previous editions unblocked… Then again, it really depends on their mission, and whether or not they actually want to keep the contest focused only on the countries within the… Read more »
Exactly, in Canada we had to go to SVT, the only country to not geoblock the stream (THANK GOD). I used LOGO TV for 2016 but Canada was geoblocked for 2017 and its getting to the point where we can’t watch ESC anymore. Just make it go back to 2015 where we can watch via Youtube Channel.
It’s not like Russia’s viewership was that high… they would barely scrap 3 millions in the other years. viewers decreased in most countries. Only a few (Italy, Norway, Denmark, Croatia among the others) saw a rise.
we will never know true ratings of Eurovision… nobody knows how they count it 🙂 Ukrainian broadcaster said that 7.1 mil watched Eurovision at least one second while 1,5 mil is average auditory of final TV show.
Different countries have different methods of collecting the data.
These are never 100% accurate and only represent estimates – sometimes it means viewers per head, sometimes per household. Also the three shows are always merged into one total, so really, they can be massaged any way they please.
Let’s just say a lot of people watched.
“Viewing figures fall… but online viewings go up…”
The story of tv in the 2010’s
Honestly I watch Eurovision on TV because streams always lag lol. At least if I watch tv I wont be struggling with lagging
Croatia: almost 700 000 viewers. Ukraine numbers are wrong for sure.
Alex don’t forget the United Kingdom the ratings were half a million DOWN from 2016.
And this is despite the lullaby having won.
Am i the only one thinking that Ukraine’s figures are extremely low for such big country and the fact that they were hosting?? How high were the Euro 2012 matches they hosted?
Bulgaria’s highest audience share since 2003—> in Eurovision or in general?
The viewing rates are very low in many countries except Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Greece, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Denmark, Iceland, Cyprus.
Bulgaria’s Junior Eurovision 2015 viewership (when they hosted) was of over 2 million… Ukraine has always had flop figures. Last year only 1.5 million watched.
From what I’ve heard, Ukraine broadcasts ESC on more than 1 channel so the figure is only the amount that watches on NTU I presume???
No, it’s being broadcasted only on NTU.
And this is terrible channel, it doesn’t even show in HD.
Most of the people here just watch it on Youtube.
That is because No One watches the BNT (bulgarian national television). The only people that actually still know it exists are the 60+ years old. Me and all other Bulgarians i know watch the show online. And vote via the app.
Perhaps Ukraine’s hosting figures were lower than usual because die hard Ukrainian fans would’ve gone to the IEC to see it live? I know that accounts for at best a couple of thousand, but still.
The image quality is quite horrible on the TV and the commentary was dreadful. Nobody watches the that channel except once a year for Eurovision. So we’ve at home watched it online this year, streaming from the laptop to the TV screen
And also every Eurovision show was number 1 on Trending list on YouTube in Ukraine for the next couple of days, and final stayed there for at least a week