The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) today revealed that 33 million viewers across 13 measured markets tuned in for the 20th Junior Eurovision Song Contest, which was held in Yerevan, Armenia, on Sunday, 11 December.
13 year old Lissandro from France was crowned the winner in a live broadcast from the Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concerts Complex.
The show’s average TV audience increased by close to 500,000 in a year to reach 7.9 million, the third largest audience since 2011.
On average, 12.8% of all TV viewers watched the 2022 competition hosted by Armenian Public Television (AMPTV) at 16:00 CET, with most participating broadcasters seeing a boost in audiences in comparison with 2021’s edition.
Hosting the competition had a huge impact on viewership in Armenia. Close to 4 in 10 Armenians tuned in to watch some part of the event and the show attracted on average 2 in 3 TV viewers.
Overall, 10 out of 13 markets delivered an audience larger than normally achieved by the broadcast channel in the slot.
In Poland, Italy, Spain, and France the average number of viewers exceeded 1 million – with 1.9 million, Poland delivered the biggest audience for the fourth year in a row.
Italian broadcaster Rai’s decision to move the show from Rai Gulp, the children’s channel, to its main channel Rai 1 resulted in a huge year-on-year increase with an average 1.5 million viewers watching the show in Italy.
Spain delivered the third largest audience with 1.2 million, double the number normally achieved in that slot, and the United Kingdom returned to the competition for the first time since 2005 with the show reaching 5.2m viewers who watched for at least one minute.
The Contest delivered an 18.5% viewing share among children aged 4 to 14, more than twice the average number normally achieved by the same group of broadcast channels of 8%.
In the Netherlands, on average 2 in 3 TV viewers aged 6 to 12 decided to watch the show on NPO 3.
And the 2.5-hour event also delivered a 14.2% viewing share among 15 – 24-year-olds, twice the average number normally achieved by the same group of broadcast channels of 7.1%.
Those numbers were also reflected online.
The Live Show was streamed live nearly half a million times on the Contest’s official YouTube channel, with more concurrent online viewers than ever before.
The Junior Eurovision Song Contest website was visited nearly 2 million times on the day of the show.
On social media the Contest enjoyed its second-best year ever.
There were 9.8 million video views on TikTok and 7.1 million video views on Instagram, the Contest’s most popular digital platforms, both up year on year on,
On Twitter, engagement was up 40% with posts on the channel being seen 5.5 million times in the lead up and during the event.
Content on the Contest’s Facebook page reached over 3 million people.
