The EBU has announced that the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, held from May 10-14 in Turin, Italy, reached a viewership of 161 million people across the three live shows.
The ratings were measured in 34 broadcast areas, corresponding to national broadcasters and associate broadcast partners across the globe. Average ratings in those areas were up three percentage points on 2021, to a share of 43.3%, meaning almost half of the people watching television on those nights were watching Eurovision.
A whopping 96.4% of Icelanders watched the shows live, and 13 of the 34 measured markets had a viewing share of over 50%. Host country Italy saw an audience of 6.6 million, their largest viewership on record – 41.9% of all television viewers in the country were tuned into the contest. 2nd place-getter Sam Ryder and 3rd place Chanel also collected the biggest viewing audiences for their home nations in a decade, with 8.9 million viewers in the UK and 6.8 million viewers in Spain.
The number of television viewers was down on last year’s total of 183 million, although ratings were not collected in Russia or Ukraine, which accounted for an audience of 29 million people between them in 2021. Ratings were also not collected in Albania, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Israel, Malta, Montenegro, North Macedonia and San Marino due to a lack of measurement systems for their national broadcasters.
As for the live YouTube stream, 7.6 million unique hits were measured, a rise of 50% on the 2021 contest’s numbers. 2.2 million of those views came out of winning country, Ukraine.
Eurovision also partnered with TikTok for the first time in 2022, where 3.3 million unique viewers watched the Grand Final live.
In total, videos across the official Eurovision YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok channels were viewed more than 284 million times. This massive social media presence helped to connect with younger audiences, with a viewing share of 56.2% for 15-24 year olds, up three points on last year.
The Eurovision Song Contest’s Executive Supervisor Martin Österdahl said, “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.”
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