Aussie fan views on Australia's Eurovision 2024 campaign and future

Aussievision recently conducted a survey with Australian fans about the Eurovision Song Contest 2024.

This covered general information on how they watched the show, how many times they voted and if they've been to the Contest.

However, this also asked some tough questions about Israel's participation, booing and how they rated the show and EBU overall.

Additionally, fans were asked about SBS's coverage, Australia's performance and future in the Contest and how we should choose our artist.

In our second in a series of articles looking at the results. We're looking at their views on Australia's Eurovision 2024 campaign and our future with the Contest.

Firstly, who did we hear from?

We received 382 respondents with 343 residing in Australia.

Unfortunately, because many international fans took the survey we will present the results of fans living in Australia only. But we do acknowledge many Aussie fans live overseas.

Attendance, watching and voting.

• 70% have never been to the Contest, 17% have been once and 3% have been five times or more.

• 60% watched the Grand Final live on SBS, 7% live in the stadium, 3% on YouTube while 21% watched it delayed either On Demand or in the Prime Time replay.

• 50% voted the full 20 times, while 31% didn't vote at all.

• 50% watched with family and friends, 32% on their own and 10% in the stadium or at an event.
  

2024 performance and result

Electric Fields with 'One Milkali (One Blood)' placed 11th for Australia in the semi-finals. They did not advance to the Grand Final by just six points.

We asked fans to rate Australia's placing and entry as either: Very good, good, neutral/average, poor or very poor.

Very good - 6%

Good - 23%

Neutral/Average - 44%

Poor - 21%

Very poor - 6%

Approximately the same amount of people rated it positively (29%) as negatively (27%).

While neutral (44%) didn't have a majority, with positives and negatives "cancelling" each other out, the overall response from fans was neutral/average.

Should Australia return to Eurovision 2025?

We asked fans: should Australia return to Eurovision next year?

Yes, definitely regardless 66%

Yes, but only if change happens within the Contest - 23%

Unsure - 6%

No - 4%

Other - 1%

A clear majority of 89% want Australia to return with just 4% opposed.

Even though many other broadcasters and fans have shared concerns, the majority of those wanting a return think Australia should return regardless of the situation.

How should Australia select their entry?

If Australia did compete, we asked fans how they would like the entry selected.

National selection show like Australia Decides - 80%

Internal choice - 8%

Unsure - 9%

Other - 4%

Overwhelmingly fans want a return to a national selection show like Australia Decides (80%). Additionally many of the other (4%) for variants of public choice.

Australia Decides was used to select Australia's entries in 2019 (Kate Miller-Heidke), 2020 (Montaigne) and 2022 (Sheldon Riley). While Australia's last two entries of Voyager and Electric Fields had previously participated. Additionally, Andrew Lambrou from Australia Decides 2022 competed for Cyprus in 2023.

What form could a national selection take?

Fans were able to select multiple options with live shows in a stadium or studio getting the majority of votes.

Live show in the stadium - 76%

Live show in a TV studio - 61%

Online with live performances - 29%

Online with live studio tracks - 11%

One fan summed up the feeling of many by putting this as another option: "We just want something, anything."

Which cities would fans be willing to travel to for a national selection show?

After three editions on the Gold Coast many fans wanted somewhere different particularly as inclement weather had impacted their experience.

The most popular options were:

Melbourne - 64%

Sydney - 55%

Brisbane - 47%

Gold Coast - 41%

Adelaide - 28%

Perth - 21%

Fans did seem to be willing to travel to Australia's largest cities, with interest dropping off in smaller or more distant potential venues.

How did they rate SBS's 2024 approach?

Respondents were asked to rate the SBS's coverage and other items on a five-star scale.

These were the results of the following questions:

How much confidence do you have in SBS as a broadcaster of Eurovision - 3.78 stars

How would you rate the SBS broadcast of Eurovision 2024 - 3.64 stars

How would you rate the promotion of Eurovision 2024 by SBS - 2.82 stars

We asked fans why they rated the way they did

Please note these are the views of fans and not Aussievision. We do not support nor condone. We do think it is important the voices of fans are shared whatever their opinion is.

Below are comments made by some fans responding.

Australia Decides

Bring back Australia Decides and SBS will get 5 stars!!!

AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING BRING BACK THE AUSTRALIA DECIDES!!!

Promotion

I saw a lot of promotion for Voyager last year but didn’t feel like there was as much for Electric Fields.

I was disappointed that SBS and the Australian media didn't promote Electric Fields more. I heard more from them on the ABC.

Good show, can we see if we could get more promotion or a major viewing party somewhere in our capital cities?"

SBS - they didn't promote it much like in previous years. Increase the budget. I felt like there was a limited budget unlike last year.

Commentary

As always, Myf and Joel talked over the hosts (not just during the voting explanation) and non-competition musical acts.

I think it's time for a change in host. Courtney Love would be perfect - so much more entertaining.

I usually love Joel and Myf but I don’t know, something lacking this year. Also love Courtney but we didn’t need to pay to send an extra person. They also need to stop talking over performances, happy for commentary in between.

Joel and Myf aren’t great commentators. SBS could do better.

The commentating of the first semi-final was not to usual standards, but improved over the week (a lot of stumbling over words, some simple errors, some talking at the start of the performances). SBS had clearly dictated what they could say about the Israel situation; the commentators did well to manage within these constrictions and appeared on edge to be sure to get the right balance.

SBS general

My trust in SBS has lowered after their internal selection of Electric Fields, where they appeared lazy and to not really care about the competition. We need to send someone over who will try and be present. Seeing the don’t care attitude during the vote count was disappointing.

SBS and Blink TV need to support artists more.

SBS can we seek clarification over the booing censorship and also seek clarity around the televote because I have no doubt there was a legitimate solidarity vote but let’s just make sure.

I like that they do at home voting with a yes or no during the prime time replay, so we can still get involved for SBS. But the lack of money and resources SBS puts into Eurovision is concerning.

What has Australia done well and how can we improve?

Fans had a lot to say on this question. We received 221 sets of comments and are collating responses to report back. We will cover this in a separate article.

We will also cover which artists fans would like to see at the contest.

Summary

As a collective Aussie fans want Australia to return to Eurovision in 2025 (89%) and would like to see a national selection show like Australia Decides used to select the artist (80%).

They would like a live show in a stadium (76%) or studio (61%) and ideally held in either Melbourne (64%) or Sydney (55%).

Despite the non-qualification, fans weren't overly negative about the performance and result giving it a neutral rating (44%).

Fans have confidence in SBS (3.8 stars) and like the coverage (3.6 stars) but had concerns about promotion (2.8 stars).

They indicated that lack of budget and/or promotion as a concern while comments on commentary were received, although the show did rate well overall with survey respondents.

We will bring you more insights from fans about what they think is working and where improvements can be made as well as who they'd like to see represent Australia.

Read next: Survey results: Views from Australian fans on Eurovision 2024

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