Eurovision 2023 reaches 162 million viewers with record breaking online engagement and musical impact

Viewers

The 2023 Eurovision Song Contest, organized by the European Broadcasting Union, reached 162 million people over the 3 live shows across 38 public service media markets. The viewing share of the Grand Final on Saturday 13 May was 40.9%, which remains more than double the broadcast channels average (17.4%).

Host country the United Kingdom delivered their largest Eurovision Song Contest audience on record, with an average of 9.9 million viewers watching the Grand Final on BBC One, up 12% on 2022, with a 63% share of viewers. Last year’s winning country, Ukraine, delivered a viewing share of 19.7%.

Both Germany and France also saw an increase in audiences, year-on-year. Germany delivered the second largest audience of any market with an average of 7.4 million viewers watching the Grand Final, up 14% on 2022, while France’s audience rebounded, gathering an average of 3.5 million viewers, up 10% on 2022.

Sweden, who made history winning the Contest for a 7th time, delivered an average audience of 2.3 million viewers, accounting for 82.3% of all TV viewers in the country. Finland, who came second in the competition. delivered their best audience since 2007, with 1.7 million viewers, up 71% on 2022.

In a third of markets (13 out of 39) the Eurovision Song Contest claimed over 50% of the viewing share, led by Iceland with 98.7% and followed closely by other Nordic markets (Norway 87.8%, Finland 85.6%, and Sweden 82.3%). Other markets that saw a share of audience higher than 50% were Armenia, Belgium Flanders, Cyprus, Croatia, Estonia, Israel, Lithuania, Slovenia and host country, the United Kingdom.

Austria delivered its best audience since 2016 and Slovenia enjoyed their highest ratings since 2015. Viewership doubled and tripled in both countries respectively.

The ESC’s Executive Supervisor Martin Österdahl said: “The Eurovision Song Contest has proved, once again, that public service media has the power to unite the world through music with a global reach we are hugely proud of. We’re thrilled to see that every year more and more people around the world discover this special event and that it is providing a huge launchpad for new music.”

7.6 million people watched the Grand Final live on YouTube with over 3.2 million live views of the Semi-Finals. 

On TikTok, the Eurovision Song Contest’s Official Entertainment Partner, the 3 live shows were viewed 4.8 million times.

The Contest once again proved hugely popular with younger audiences watching public service television. Among 15–24-year-olds, the viewing share of the Grand Final was 53.5%, remaining four times higher than the broadcast channels average (13.8%).

Online Engagement

Online, the Eurovision Song Contest’s digital platforms saw record engagement.

105 million unique accounts were reached on TikTok during the two weeks of the event. TikTok also saw a total of 315 million video views on the official Eurovision account – up 40% year-on-year. There were a further 53 million views of content in the days following the Grand Final. 

25 million engagement actions (such as liking, commenting etc) took place on TikTok in the weeks of the Contest and the Eurovision account gained 644,000 new followers. Videos on the platform using the hashtag #Eurovision2023 have been watched 4.8 billion times.

45 million unique viewers across 232 countries and territories watched content on the official YouTube channel during the week of the Live Shows – up 2.7m on 2022. 63% of those watching on YouTube were aged 16-34 years old.

32 million unique accounts were reached on Instagram – three times as many as in 2022. Videos on the platform were seen 181 million times, while content on the Eurovision Song Contest Facebook page was seen by 29 million people during the two event weeks – 5 million more than in 2022.

4 million tweets using the word “Eurovision” were sent on Twitter between the First Semi-Final and the Grand Final, and tweets from the official account had over 113 million impressions between 30 April and 15 May.

In total, videos on the 4 social channels were watched nearly 540 million times during the weeks of the event – nearly double the amount seen in 2022.

Musical Success

The Eurovision Song Contest continues to produce worldwide hits and promote music from across the participating nations in 2023.

The official Eurovision Song Contest 2023 playlist on Spotify was the most-streamed Spotify playlist globally on Sunday 14 May. The platform’s Global chart for all streaming across the world also saw 5 entries from 2023 break into the Top 200 on the same day.

Winning song Tattoo’s streaming tally of over 4.2 million plays on the day after the Grand Final beat the previous highest total for 2021’s winner Zitti E Buoni by Måneskin. The number of plays also set another record for Loreen, who became the first woman to win the Song Contest twice. She now has the highest number of streams ever achieved in a single day by a Swedish female artist.

Contest runner-up Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä achieved the most daily Spotify streams of all time in Finland, with Finnish listeners pressing play on the Eurovision party-starter a massive 469,000 times on the day after the Grand Final. Cha Cha Cha ended the week with 2.5m listens on Spotify Finland alone - which is the highest weekly tally of streams ever seen in Käärijä's native Finland.

Media Coverage

Over 1,100 journalists from over 50 countries were accredited to cover the event in Liverpool - of those around 180 were from fan community media. Around 550 journalists were accredited to cover the event online, including around 230 from fan community media.

Coverage of the event grew 20% year on year with over 150,000 articles written about the Eurovision Song Contest in May alone.

While the full economic and social impact of hosting the event in Liverpool is still being evaluated, early data and figures from Merseyside Police suggest that an additional 500,000 visitors came to the city in the two weeks running up to the Contest.

Voting

For the first time this year, viewers watching in non-participating countries could also cast their votes online for their favourite songs. Votes were received from 144 countries in total, including the 37 taking part.

Outside the participating countries, viewers in the United States, Canada, Kosovo, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Mexico, Hungary, Slovakia, UAE, Türkiye, and Chile cast the most votes online.