SBS Share Social Content Throughout Eurovision Broadcast

Australian broadcaster SBS has celebrated Eurovision audiences with fan commentary included as part of its coverage of the 64th Eurovision Song Contest in Israel.

SBS captured all the excitement around the country as audiences came together for Eurovision parties with families, friends, even pets. Fan reactions were shared throughout the Semi-Final and Final primetime broadcasts, bridging the gap between viewers and the live events in Tel Aviv.

Producers used Never.no's STORY platform to monitor social conversation during both the live shows and primetime broadcasts via the hashtag, #Eurovision. Tweets and Instagram posts were collated using STORY's integrated search function to give audiences the chance to be part of the conversation.

Nicole Crosdale, Senior Project Manager at SBS said We have a lot of fun with Eurovision and love being able to make the show interactive for our viewers. The STORY platform enabled us to manage high volumes of social content during the broadcast, bringing the party to our viewers and capturing their excitement within our programming .

Eurovision hits the peak The Semi-Finals are a chance for fans to vote for their favourites - and get a sneak peak of who might take out the top spot on Grand Final night. Social media speaks volumes, giving producers the ability to track trends such as most engaged', top countries' and even follow positive and negative sentiment among audiences.

Never.no's STORY social tracking capabilities found conversation during the live Semi-Final 1 was strong, peaking at more than 800 posts per minute when Australia's Kate Miller-Heidke performed.

Check out the spikes of Twitter activity around each #Eurovision SF2 performance and the excitement/disappointment when results were announced. We observed an aggregated massive peak rate of 55 Tweets per sec and expect that to double during Saturday's final. #socialmedia #tech pic.twitter.com/zagrwYbJpw

- never.no (@neverno) May 17, 2019

SBS's evening broadcast of Semi-Final 1 from 8:30pm on Thursday saw a steep rise in social volume, with the hashtag #SBSEurovision trending in Australia. Audiences clearly loved connecting with other Eurovision fans, sharing their favourites and predicting who would make it through to the Grand Final.

Semi-Final 2 was equally as exciting, with Sweden and Switzerland dominating social media in the first half of the broadcast, before The Netherlands, North Macedonia and Sweden took the top three spots. Nine out of the ten most talked about performers on social media made it through to the Grand Final!

The Eurovision Grand Final in Israel's capital of Tel Aviv on Sunday morning (Australian time) was a spectacular event with fierce competition from 41 countries.

A brilliant battle took place, as Sweden, Russia, Switzerland, Italy and North Macedonia all ranked highly with both judges and audiences.

Norway was the night's dark horse, jumping from the bottom of the ladder to make the top five thanks to a huge score from audiences - including Australians who voted Norway as the favourite performance of the night. We can see the public's praise for Norway reflected when we add a filter for Tweets mentioning love' and see they're a stand out.

In the end, The Netherlands triumphed for the first time in 44 years with Duncan Laurences ballad, Arcade. The Netherlands topped the leader board with 492 points after the public vote, while Italy finished second with 465 points and Russia came third with 369 points. Australias Kate Miller-Heidke ranked 9th place overall, for her popera hit, Zero Gravity.

As always, Eurovision united fans around Europe (and of course, Australia) to celebrate a shared love of glitter, glamour and of course, great music.

Never.no is proud to work closely with the SBS team to bring the joy of social interactivity to life for events that bring together diverse audiences in celebration of our shared similarities.

Related: 8 Reasons to Include Viewer-Generated Social Content in your Broadcasts

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