How many people in Spain watch the Eurovision final?

How to get close to this number

Work from the population and the share. The country has around forty-eight million people, and the explanation gives a forty percent share of the television audience that night. A large share of the smaller number of people actually watching television gives a figure of a few million.

Share and audience are different measures, and mixing them up is the most common error in television statistics. A forty percent share means four in ten of those watching television, not four in ten of the population — and since most people are not watching television at any given moment, the share is always much larger than the reach.

The funding detail in the explanation explains the country's automatic qualification: the largest financial contributors qualify directly for the final rather than competing in a semi-final. That is an unusual arrangement for a competition, and it means the contest's structure openly encodes who pays for it — which is worth knowing before treating the results as purely sporting.