A Dal 2018 finished last Saturday, where the metal band AWS came out as the winners with “Viszlat nyar” (Eng: Goodbye Summer), and they will go on to represent Hungary in the Eurovision Song Contest 2018. MTVA has now published the full viewing figures for all six shows, measured by Nielsen.

The most watched show of this year’s A Dal series was its very first heat, which was the only show to attract more than 400,000 viewers. The Grand Final was the second most watched show, with 399,508 viewers, which is the least watched Final in the history of this contest, which has been going on since 2012. This meant that the Final of A Dal 2018 was only the 16th most watched show during the week on all channels in Hungary, while it was the second most watched show on the MTVA channels. This is the second time in the history that the Grand Final was not the most watched show – the same thing happened in 2015, when the first heat was seen by approximately 56,200 people more than the Grand Final.

Here are the viewing figures of the Finals of A Dal per years:

• 2012: 1,015,000
• 2013: 1,173,441
• 2014: 890,558
• 2015: 652,895
• 2016: 746,354
• 2017: 542,030
• 2018: 399,508

Last year also marked the very first time that the actual Eurovision Song Contest Final was seen by more people than the A Dal final, when the Eurovision Final was the 3rd most watched show of the week, whilst the final of A Dal was only 14th. One can expect that this trend is probably going to continue this year as well.

The year with the biggest viewing figures of both A Dal and the Final of Eurovision remains 2013, the year of ByeAlex, when both the A Dal Final, and the Eurovision Final were seen by more than 1 million people in Hungary.