Eurovision 2023: How the song contest can turn stars into millionaires

ABBA star Bjorn Ulvaeus has revealed how the band’s Eurovision win changed their lives. See how the contest shot major artists to global stardom.

Every Eurovision Song Contest performer has ABBA-sized stars in their eyes.

The Swedish Fab Four were catapulted to global pop stardom after winning the competition in 1974 with Waterloo, a song which continues to generate millions of dollars in royalties 50 years later in the streaming era.

Prior to the 2023 Eurovision final in Liverpool, ABBA star Bjorn Ulvaeus told this year’s Eurovision acts their lives “could be about to change forever” as he acknowledged the impact it had on the lives of him and his fellow group members.

Good luck to our 26 Grand Finalists! 🫶 #Eurovisionpic.twitter.com/ZcZYf8uTgs

— Eurovision Song Contest (@Eurovision) May 13, 2023

“When ABBA walked onto that stage, we couldn’t have even imagined 50 years later we’d have a museum about us and that we would perform as avatars in ABBA Voyage,” Ulvaeus said.

“Our international success all began with Eurovision and it’s so great to see recent acts are having great success too. Their journey started with Eurovision too.”

Over its 67 years, Eurovision can claim to have launched a galaxy of pop idols. Olivia Newton-John competed for the UK in the same year as ABBA. Cliff Richard was beaten by just one point in 1968.

British representative Lulu won in 1969, Spain’s Julio Iglesias came fourth in 1970 and Celine Dion took the title for Switzerland in 1988.

Eurovision 1988: Celine Dion won the grand final then. Picture: Getty

Portuguese singer Lúcia Moniz represented her country at the 1996 Eurovision and while her music may not have troubled the charts elsewhere, you will recognise her as Aurélia, the love interest of Colin Firth, in the Christmas classic Love Actually.

ABBA were catapulted to global pop stardom after winning Eurovision in 1974. Picture: AFP

As the star-making powers of the television talent quest franchises of Idol, The Voice and X Factor have waned over the past decade, Eurovision has an enviable track record for dispatching contestants onto the world stage.

Austrian power-lunged bearded diva Conchita Wurst became a powerful advocate for diversity and an icon among the global LGBT community after winning in 2014 with the James Bond-esque anthem Rise Like A Phoenix.

Conchita Wurst performs onstage during the National Lottery's Big Eurovision Welcome event outside St George's Hall on May 07, 2023 in Liverpool. Picture: Getty

A regular visitor to Australia since then, Wurst was a major drawcard for the World Pride celebrations in February and March.

Olivia Newton John at the 1974 Eurovision contest. Picture: Eurovision/ Youtube

The biggest post-Eurovision pop export in recent years – and most unlikely – has been electrifying Italian rockers Måneskin who won in Rotterdam in 2021 when the contest returned after its pandemic pause.

A succession of singles after the rock underdog’s winning song Zitti e Buoni have breached the charts worldwide, including a cover of the Four Seasons’ 1967 northern soul hit Beggin’ and I Wanna Be Your Slave, featuring Iggy Pop.

Voyager have made it into the 2023 Eurovision final. Picture: Chloe Hashemi / EBU

Måneskin has sold an estimated 40 million records worldwide and generated four billion streams across all platforms and will tour Australia in November.

“Before Eurovision we went through a very tough year; everybody was trying to stop us doing this kind of music and doing Eurovision,” frontman Damiano David said.

“Nobody believed in us. So we had this feeling of being the underdogs that won.”

British singer Sam Ryder became a TikTok sensation with his covers during the pandemic lockdowns and was chosen to give the UK a fighting chance at the 2022 contest after a long run of grand final disasters which had placed them in the bottom half of the scoreboard.

His entry song Space Man won the jury vote in 2022 but was swamped by the tsunami of support shown by fans for Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra as the eastern European country valiantly fought against the Russian invasion.

Ryder’s label is now ramping up to take him global with new single Mountain, released just in time for his performance at the 2023 Eurovision grand final in Liverpool this weekend.

Guy Sebastian performs at Eurovision in 2015. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

Australia’s Eurovision entrants have mostly been established pop stars who already had enjoyed considerable chart success at home.

But star turns on the stage of the world’s biggest singing jamboree have opened up lucrative new audiences throughout Europe, in particular for Guy Sebastian.

His catalogue is closing in on a total of one billion streams, with Germany, UK, Netherlands and Russia among his top 10 countries on Spotify and Apple.

Aussie singer Isaiah Firebrace won the eighth season of The X Factor Australia in 2016 competed at Eurovision. Picture: Supplied

Our biggest post-Eurovision success in terms of translating their performance into money-spinning streams is surprisingly Isaiah Firebrace.

He finished a credible 9th place with his song Don’t Come Easy in 2017, which has more than 15 million streams. But his campaign in Kyiv that year turned millions of Europeans onto his debut single It’s Gotta Be You, which currently has a whopping 300 million streams.

Our representative in Liverpool this year, Perth synth metal rockers Voyager with their infectious track Promise, have been touring through Europe for more than a decade and have already established a solid fanbase there.

Frontman Danny Estrin, who was born in Germany, speaks a handful of European languages and has been impressing the Eurovision community with his cover versions of several of this year’s songs.

Australia’s Voyager at 2023 Eurovision. Picture: Corinne Cumming / EBU

After years of lobbying SBS to send them to compete at Eurovision, when they were finally selected the band rescheduled all their album and touring plans, shifting the release of Fearless In Love, their first record in four years to July to capitalise on the profile boost offered by the contest and its 160 million viewers.

“We’ve got an amazing fanbase behind us and our fans are generally just massive nerds who will care passionately about something and get behind the cause, get behind the song, get on all the forums and be spruiking it,” Estrin said.

“And that’s why it was really important to not just write a pop song for Eurovision, but also make sure that we are still sticking to what we do, the pop element but also the metal, because they’re our roots.”

With the band mobbed by hundreds of people every time they left their Liverpool hotel, it appears their hard work to win more fans with their synthsensational music and engaging character will pay off in album and ticket sales.

The 2023 Eurovision Grand Final airs on SBS from 5am on Sunday.