Eyes on the Prize of Global Recognition: Measuring the Economic Impacts of Top Placement in the Eurovision Song Contest

Abstract

Beginning in 1956 with just seven participating countries, the Eurovision Song Contest is the longest-running annual TV music competition and now involves 40 to 50 nations a year. Despite its uniqueness as an international, performance-based song competition, Eurovision’s broadcast viewership and sizable venue requirements classify it as a “mega-event” of the likes of the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics. As such, Eurovision also exhibits the potential for economic impacts at the local and national levels, due to increased visibility and hosting being the reward of winning the show. This thesis involves a detailed and complete overview of the economic effects of various means of measuring Eurovision success, aside from simply winning and hosting, by implementing clustered, augmented OLS regressions with and without the use of controls. By investigating the effects of several World Development Indicators from the World Bank Data Bank and tourism measures from the United Nations World Tourism Organization alongside historical points and ranking data from the European Broadcasting Union’s official Eurovision website, I found that certain wealth-based economic metrics were negatively correlated with high performance in the contest. Economic and tourism measures not directly pertaining to wealth were generally found to either increase or not be affected by success in the contest, with tourism coverage increasing by 11.62% with regard to countries hosting Eurovision. This research will amplify the limited existing literature on the economic effects of top performance in the competition.