Added up, over the three live shows of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 in Kyiv, Ukraine, aired in the 42 competing countries, figures have now shown that the contest in those 42 countries was watched by 182 million people!

This means less viewers than last year, which can be attributed to the fact that Russia (a big television market) did not participate this year, but on average it had the same average share as the contest of 2016: that of 36,2%. This is more than double the average viewing share that same group of channels would have at prime time. The usual viewing share is 15,8%.

A big jump in online viewers could be noticed this year, though! 8.5 millions requests to watch the shows on-demand and 6 million live streaming sessions in as much as 233 different territories all over the world.

Noteworthy is that the viewing share among young people (in this case defined as 15-24 year olds) is way higher than usual. The ”normal” viewing share is 11% but during the three shows, on average, a viewing share of 42,9% was measured. Among children (age: 4-15) the viewing share was 34,8% (usually 8,7%) and among young adults (25-34) 38,3% versus the usual 10,4%.

Some viewing records were broken this year!

Portugal had its largest amount of viewers since 2008, 1.4 million, 32,5% of the Portuguese people watching TV that night were watching the grand final that night.

650.000 people were watching in Bulgaria (39,4% of the Bulgarian TV-viewers were watching) which is the highest audience since they started measuring the viewership in 2003 and Italy had their highest audience since their return in 2011: 3,6 million viewers, 15% more than last year.

Germany broke their own record for the 8th year in a row (7,8 million viewers this time) and the hosts, Ukraine, had 18,8% of the viewers that night watching their contest, meaning 1,5 million people.

The country with the highest amount of viewers was Iceland, where a smashing 98% of the TV-viewers were watching the grand final unfold. Even more impressive since it was the third year without Iceland competing in the final, but Icelandic were determined to watch anyway as 150.000 people were watching, 16% more than in 2016 and the highest amount since 2014, which was when they last made the final.