Survey results: Views from Australian fans on Eurovision 2025

Aussievision recently conducted a survey with Australian fans about the Eurovision Song Contest 2025.

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 on Israel's participation, reducing crowd noise 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 the first of a series looking at the results, we start with their views on Eurovision 2025 and the EBU.

Firstly, who did we hear from?

We received 251 respondents with 220 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.

• 73% have never been to the Contest, 17% have been once and 3% have been five times or more.

• 72% watched the Grand Final live on SBS, 3% live in the stadium, 5% on YouTube while 41% watched it delayed either On Demand or in the Prime Time replay (noting people can watch live and then the replay).

• 50% voted the full 20 times, while 30% didn't vote at all (this was nearly exactly the same as last year's results - 50% and 31%).

• 54% watched with family and friends, 34% on their own and 10% in the stadium or at an event.

Israel's participation

When asked if Israel should have participated, fans responded:

(Difference from 2024 in brackets)

Yes: 14% (-3%)

Unsure: 11% (-2%)

No: 75% (+5%)

When asked if they should compete next year if the situation remains the same, the votes against participation increased:

Yes: 10% (-5%)

Unsure: 12% (+1%)

No: 79% (+4%)

Crowd noise

When asked if Eurovision organisers should reduce noise from the audience, fans responded:

Yes: 6%

Unsure: 10%

No: 81%

Other: 3%

In last year's survey, we asked if they should cover up boos from the audience with 69% saying no, 16% yes and 13% unsure.

Voting system

When asked which voting system they would prefer, fans responded:

50% jury / 50% public vote – current system: 52% (-2%)

50% jury / 50% public vote combined (pre-2016 system): 24% (+4%)

Some jury but a % that favours the public vote: 14% (-6%)

Some public but a % that favours the jury vote: 8% (+5%)

100% public vote: 2% (-1%)

Other entries: 1%

How did they rate Eurovision 2025?

Respondents were asked to rate the Contest and other items on a five star scale.

These were the results of these:

How would you rate Eurovision 2025 overall - 3.80 stars

(Up from 3.28 in 2024)

How would you rate the Eurovision 2025 show itself - 4.14 stars

(Up from 3.84 in 2024)

How would you rate the coverage of Eurovision by fan media overall - 4.06 stars

(Up from 3.82 in 2024)

How much trust do you have in the EBU - the organisers of Eurovision - 2.97 stars

(Up from 2.50 in 2024)

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 around common themes by fans.

Voting

Personally I think voting needs to be reformed completely. Either get people to rank their top 10 or 15 and dole points out accordingly, or maybe even add a demoscopic jury as well to make sure that the people’s votes are acutely representative. I do think that had Israel not competed this year or last for that matter, that the voting system would not be such an issue, but seeing as it’s possible they’re coming back next year something drastic has to change. Honestly the contest was good this year (apart from the lack of audience noise which I think really hurt Australia, Malta and even Finland this year) but after Israel got all those points from the televote it just wasn’t fun and it felt rigged.

Something needs to change with the voting - there’s no way the Australian public gave 12 points to Israel. The song was boring and her cardigan sleeve got caught on her set

Voting system did not reflect public vote so that's why less stars for eurovision. If voting system changed would be a better show. Otherwise still enjoy watching eurovision.

Stop allowing the public to start voting at the start of the final. It encourages vote stacking

Voting system needs to change. There should be ranking from 1-26. So no entry gets a 0 vote and would also provide better assessment on all acts not top 10. Public voting would be fairer and less susceptible to rigging.

The fun and joy has been removed from the contest. I pledge my 20 votes for 4-5 different artists however this year I felt unseen. Israel's manipulation of the votes as well as the rest of the world voting opening early promotes an uneven playing field and I feel i am lining the EBUs pockets rather than supporting artists.

The public vote is a core part of the contest and should remain but it is open to manipulation on a scale that is skewing the results and leading to an imbalance that has to be addressed

Televote manipulation by Israel and others is a real problem. I'm sure all of the people who voted for Israel in Australia (to make us give 12 points) were not actually watching Eurovision. Maybe they need to have a system where you need to scan a code on the TV live to enable your vote or something to prevent manipulation.

EBU really needs to get its house in order, especially by clamping down on advertising to vote a certain way.

For all the criticism over the years of the jury vote, I now think the televote is completely untrustworthy and not fit for purpose.

The EBU need to acknowledge voting shenanigans which mean people feel like they wasted their votes

Crowd noise reduction

Several performances this year were really impacted by the ‘lack of audience participation’. Compared to past finals the difference was notable. I love hearing the audience singing along.

the muting of the crowd noise was a bad decision which needs to stay in 2025

The EBU just really hid this year and fake crowd takes away from the experience of Eurovision. Hearing the crowd is an important part of each act.

The impact of cheering tracks and Israel’s participation are quite significant.

The contest needs the real audience noise. Some songs, our own this year, rely on audience reaction and if the crowd sound is muted it doesn't come across well watching on TV.

Israel's participation

I used to support SBS remaining silent in this issue, but no longer, as Israel is showing that they are willing to be cruel because there are no consequences to its actions.

The organisers need to ban Israel and help smaller countries to rejoin. Even open it to countries outside EU.

Israel should be out, EBU can’t ban Russia but turn a blind eye to what Israel is doing to Palestinians. The contest doesn’t feel like a song contest anymore, it’s become a propaganda tool to try to demonstrate political support. And that’s not fair to the artists.

It is imperative that Israel remain in the contest - and that they continue to be defeated. Twice an orchestrated hijacking has failed. This is evidence of the institution’s strength. The community need to understand that their constant stream of (fair and justified) criticism about Israel’s involvement will only embolden their supporters to attempt another hijacking. Focus on the positives. Mobilise the vote behind audience favourites.

I cannot have complete trust in the EBU while they continue to allow Israel to take part. We saw how this year could have ended in disaster.

ESC should not be a political event. I’m all for protesting against the Israeli government, however it shouldn’t be directed at an individual singing in a song contest.

Once again, the dark shadow of having Israel participating in the competition really reduced the enjoyment of the competition for me. I feel nothing but dread in the lead up and find that I enjoy some of the national finals so much more than the competition itself. I strongly believe that the lengths that the EBU is going to in order to protect Israel’s participation is a detriment to the contest as a whole and puts it in jeopardy of becoming redundant altogether. Honestly, I think I’ll need to reassess my relationship to the competition if they remain in the contest in 2026 - the fun has just been sucked out of the room the past couple of years.

EBU

EBU has problems, hopefully can come to grips with them effectively. Voting issues, weird flag policies, denying fan media passes if they were critical of EBU.

I've watched Eurovision from the very first year SBS started to transmit it (through snow and all). Coming from Europe, it was a yearly traditional link back to our heritage. I love Eurovision but the last 2 years have been disappointing with the decisions that the EBU have made and the behaviours that they have allowed. I think the EBU has lost touch with it's audience and changes need to be made apart from the behaviours of certain countries (Israel in particular).

The EBU has expressed that the show is apolitical - but this year it was evident that the State of Israel used astroturfing to skew results in their favour for political purpose. I felt as an audience member I was witnessing art-washing/pink-washing in favour of Israel (who is committing genocide and war crimes). This really impacted how I felt at the end of the grand final and left me unable to trust EBU.

On the EBU - the trend to ignore existential issues and respond to critique by introducing bans and restrictions is both depressing and symptomatic of poor leadership

Fan media

Overall coverage by most of the fan media seemed to have “bent the knee” to the EBU requirement to not discuss and have open conversations about the negative impacts Israel’s participation had in 2024 and 2025 - this seemed to allow them access to the press area??? I would now rather follow more closely those who have spoken up and who were denied access to the press area as they therefore come across as more trustworthy.

Not about ratings but i do wish you were more blunt about the current genocide in gaza rather than referring to it as "the current situation". as much as i love the aussievision team and i consider many of you friends i have been very disappointed on the silence and the use of non-direct language used when covering the context around Israel's participation.

The only fan media that I paid attention to religious this year was Aussievision and ESC Tom. I like the honest vocal coach as well. I found others that I normally followed were too biased, didn’t seem to know their stuff, or the comments were just too nasty. Some fan groups I question whether you could still call a lot of people fans. I used to feel a post-Eurovision loss but the last two years it was more relief.

Summary

As a collective the Australian fans responding to our survey do not support reducing crowd noise (81%), Israel's participation this year (75%) or next year (79%). And these numbers have increased since 2024.

Despite their disagreements with the above, they rated Eurovision and the show much higher than in 2024.

They rated the Eurovision show itself very high (4.1 stars) and the contest overall lower (3.8 stars). This was up 0.3 and 0.5 stars respectively on last year.

They indicated a lack of trust in the EBU (2.9 stars) but this did rise from last year's score of 2.5 stars.

The main issues appear to be around the voting situation, Israel's participation and the muting of the live crowd.

The voting concerns saw the most comments and have seen some support shift away from the current structure.

We will bring you more results including on SBS and Australia's participation and performance and who fans want to see represent the nation, in the coming days.

Survey results from 2024:

Survey results: Views from Australian fans on Eurovision 2024

For continued updates on all Eurovision news follow Aussievision on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. All links at: https://linktr.ee/aussievisionnet