Eurovision, where French candidate Slimane came 4th on Saturday evening, was an audience success for France 2, with nearly 5.4 million viewers, the public channel announced on Sunday, citing figures from Médiamétrie.
This audience is close to that of the 2021 edition, when Barbara Pravi won second place. That year, the song competition was followed by 5.5 million viewers in France. This was the best French audience for Eurovision since 2009 (5.7 million viewers, 32.3% audience share, at the time on France 3).
In terms of audience share (i.e. the proportion of viewers who follow the show), Slimane is even better than Barbara Pravi: Eurovision 2024 achieved an audience share of 36.8%, compared to 31.4% in 2021. If we take this criterion, France 2 signed “its best performance in ten years for a first part of the evening (excluding sports)”, specified the channel.
The peak of 7.62 million viewers was reached a little after 11 p.m. for Slimane’s appearance on stage with his song Mon amour. In 2023, Eurovision attracted 3.5 million French viewers on average, or 25.6% audience share.
On Saturday, it was the Swiss artist Nemo who won Eurovision with The Code, at the end of a 2024 edition organized in Sweden and marked by lively controversy over the participation of Israel, in the midst of war in the Gaza strip.