How France Télévisions dominated the Eurovision Song Contest via social media

By Natan Edelsburg 

The 58th annual Eurovision Song Contest took place in Malmo, Sweden in May. The Contest is one of the world’s longest-running tv shows, and, with 100 million viewers tuning in, it is also one of the most watched. Each country in the competition submits a song, and then votes on the other countries’ songs to determine the most popular one. This year’s winner was Denmark with Emmelie de Forest’s “Only Teardrops.” Despite placing 23rd (out of 26), France had perhaps the most impressive social TV showing of the competing countries. France Télévisions –  the official broadcaster of the Eurovision in France – offered viewers an immersive second screen experience to enhance a final event that lasted 3-plus hours.

To keep viewers engaged, France Télévisions used a desktop and tablets app, developed by Novedia Group. 
During the show, content and interactive features were delivered dynamically via the app’s timeline, which included facts about the songs, insider photos, tweets
, instant replays, animated gifs, and real-time polls.

Users had the ability to share each piece of content via Facebook & Twitter, and could send a selection of curated tweets directly from the app. The app also allowed users to choose and share a 30 second clip from the live show.

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Across desktop and tablet, the app generated an impressive 1.6 million pageviews, and received 129,000 answers to the interactive polls. In addition, more than 182,000 tweets about the contest were sent from France.  

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