The viewing figures for the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 are down amidst the boycott against Israel’s hosting – but only just.
It has been confirmed that 182 million people worldwide watched as Duncan Laurence won for The Netherlands, down just four million on 2018’s contest.
The figure had been expected to be much lower, after there was a worldwide call to boycott the contest due to the Israeli occupation of Palestianian territories.
However, the Grand Final’s TV audience share across 40 territories was one percentage point higher year on year, with 36.7% of the viewing audience tuning in.
Most impressively, though, was the percentage of the viewing audience watching the final in Iceland – a whopping 98.4% of which tuned in.
Less than 2% of the viewing audience chose not to watch as rock band Hatari represented the country with their song Hatrio mun sigra – and thus missed the group holding up Palestinian flags during the voting.
The winning country, the Netherlands, saw 4.5 million viewers watching the final, accounting for 73.4% of the viewing audience and the national broadcaster’s biggest audience since 2014.
And host country Israel racked up its highest Eurovision audience since 1999, with 1.3 million viewers (63.2% of TV viewers) watching the final.
Germany yet again produced the highest average viewing figures of any market for the ninth year in a row, with 7.6 people people watching.
The European Broadcasting Union also revealed that 40 million unique viewers watched the song contest on YouTube in 225 territories, with 72% of these viewers being under 35.
Younger audiences are on the rise on television too, with 45.3% of 15-24 year olds watching the final, 2% up from last year.
This year’s Eurovision saw Duncan Laurence of the Netherlands win with his ballad Arcade, while the United Kingdom came dead last with Michael Rice and his song Bigger Than Us.
However, the drama kept going after the contest ended, as the EBU confirmed that there had been errors with the scoring, resulting in changes in the leaderboard.
Norway were pushed out of the top five and replaced by Sweden – and the UK’s score got even more dismal.
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