Planet Earth, get ready for the madness that is Eurovision! A taste of Eurovision permeated the inaugural StreamTV Europe industry event in Lisbon, Portugal on Tuesday, courtesy of a session entitled: “The Original Song Contest: A Eurovision Case Study.”
Now, the U.S. is getting a free option to follow all the fun and the fury of the annual singing competition, courtesy of YouTube. Jurian Van Der Meer, commercial director of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), who oversees all business and commercial activities related to the Eurovision Song Contest, broke the news during the panel that YouTube has struck a deal for the event, starting with this year’s 70th anniversary edition, taking place in Vienna, Austria. The deal covers the semifinals and final, which are also already available in the U.S. for Peacock subscribers.
So far, “we didn’t really have a strategy for distributing our content” longer-term, including the national selection processes, Van der Meer shared on the Lisbon stage. Now, the free U.S. YouTube livestream will change that. The semifinals take place May 12 and 14, followed by the final on May 16.
The exec told THR after the session that YouTube already streamed the song contest last year, but that was not widely known yet. YouTube’s deal covers the world, except for select markets where local broadcasters chose not to share the event with the streaming platform, including in the U.K. and Australia, he said.
On stage, Van der Meer on Tuesday also addressed this year’s latest Eurovision conflict around a controversy surrounding last year’s public vote in Israel and the inclusion of Israel amid the Gaza war. While the debate led to rule changes, five countries decided to boycott this year’s edition. They are Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain. These five have not sent representatives to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, but two of them, namely the Netherlands and Iceland, will air the event.
“Politics does come in once in a while, unfortunately,” explained Van der Meer. “The music is what we will have [our] focus on. We welcome everybody, but we also understand and respect … that people are having certain views.”
Eurovision panel at StreamTV Europe in Lisbon, courtesy of Georg Szalai
Tuesday’s Eurovision panel, hosted by media universe cartographer Evan Shapiro, also featured Filipe Ligeiro, who works on the digital strategy of Festival da Canção, one of the longest-running television programs in Portugal and the country’s national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest, who shared: “Eurovision for us is a really good global platform,” he said, explaining that last year’s Portuguese Eurovision entry, the band NAPA, is now one of the country’s hottest muscial acts.
Yiğit Doğan Çelik, the chair and CEO of Merzigo Global, a media technology company focusing on the distribution and monetization of premium film, TV, and digital content across open video platforms, also touted the global opportunity for the song contest.
Van der Meer also highlighted the recent EBU deal with Voxovation, S2O Productions and Thailand’s Channel 3 for the inaugural Eurovision Song Contest Asia in Bangkok on Nov. 14. Shouldn’t that competition be called Asiavision, Shapiro asked? Acknowledged the executive: “There’s a little debate.”
