This year’s Eurovision song contest is fast approaching – on 13^th May the UK’s very own Liverpool will be hosting the hotly anticipated event. Swathes of fans from across Europe will take over the live audience whilst millions will be watching and celebrating at home. Last year an estimated 8.9 million people tuned in to watch, and in previous years this number has been even higher.

We want to make everyone’s home watch parties even more fun and interactive so we’ve launched an exclusive range for the event – the Our Song Contest range. Check it out and get yours here.

With Eurovision being such an iconic event we thought we’d run down our top 5 fun facts about it…

1. Now we all know the world famous ABBA’s fame came from the fact they performed ‘Waterloo’ in the 1974 contest, for Sweden. Did you also know that the UK quite embarrassingly only awarded ABBA zero points, or “nul point” as the phrase goes. Whoops! Luckily it made no difference to their world wide fame following the show.

2. The UK has a bit of a reputation of not being wildly favoured by our European neighbours, with our acts falling short on points year on year. However we are not actually the least successful country after all. Norway emerges with the worst performance record in Eurovision, finishing at the bottom on 11 years. Let’s cheer them on a bit harder this year!

3. In contrast one entrant has won Eurovision three times – Ireland. Ireland’s Johnny Logan won the competition for his country in 1980, going on to win once again in 1987. Later, Logan would write the competition-winning entry “Why Me”, performed by Linda Martin, in 1992, thus technically winning the competition again. Logan clearly had the magic touch!

4. Do you know how the European Song Contest came to be? It was actually an effort by European broadcasters to lift the mood of the European public in the years after World War II. A live TV event of this scope and magnitude had never been done before.. now that’s a success story.

4. In fact, it’s such a success that in the 64 years leading up to the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest, it had never been cancelled. However, with government restrictions during COVID-19 the contest was scrapped for the first time ever. Thank goodness it was back in 2021.

 What's your favourite facts about the contest?

 Find out more about this year's contest here: https://eurovision.tv/