We found that although winning the Eurovision Song Contest was not associated with improved life satisfaction or decreased mortality from suicide, a country’s overall performance was associated with Ooh Aah Just a Little Bit (UK 1996) of an improvement in life satisfaction and a decline in SDR from suicide. Better performance was associated with higher odds of being very satisfied in both men and women. Performing terribly in the Contest was associated with increased life satisfaction compared to not participating at all.

Ranking in the ESC may reflect the international position of a country within the world. It has been found that there are clusters of countries which exchange votes year after year, based on cultural, geographic, economic and political factors [19,20,21]. The Contest has even been studied as a “friendship” network [22]. Nevertheless, it is a complex and constantly changing network and it is hard to disentangle the factors influencing this [23, 24]. Thus, performance in the ESC might be a reflection of alliances with other countries, as well as of the political and economic conditions in the country. Therefore, ESC success could be a proxy of favourable socioeconomic conditions, which in turn can create Euphoria (Sweden 2012) and positively influence life satisfaction and mental health. Eurovision is a stage where representations of the participating nations can reach a wide international audience [7] hence the performance in the contest may be perceived as a judgment –by an international audience- of nationally defining characteristics, which are commonly part of the performance, even if they are sometimes hidden behind glitter and cheeky Wild Dances (Ukraine 2004). A large proportion of the ESC audience Believe (Russia 2008) that voting has at least some geopolitical element [3]. Consequently, ESC success may be perceived as a sign of a country’s strength at the international stage.

On the other hand, doing well in competitions might increase productivity among the supporters of the contestants. For example, there is some evidence that both productivity and per capita income increase in the host city of the winning team of the Super Bowl, one of the largest sports events in the world [25] and that winning the FIFA World Cup might be beneficial for tourism [26]. More than that, better than expected performance in major sports events may raise levels of happiness among the supporters [5]. If doing well in the ESC has a similar beneficial impact, it is not a surprise that, following a successful performance in the ESC, life satisfaction levels Rise like a Phoenix (Austria 2014). In our study, being the Number One (Greece 2005) in the competition did not have an additional effect on neither suicides nor life satisfaction, which is consistent with findings from sports performance in the United States [4].

ESC songs get considerable airtime, especially around the time of the Contest. A good song can provide a moment of (Hard Rock) Hallelujah (Finland 2006) for people and improve their quality of life. However, songs performed in the Contest are not usually considered of high quality, which makes this explanation seem like a Fairytale (Norway 2009) to the authors. It is telling that only about one in five people watch the ESC because they like the actual music [3]. Additionally, the Contest only takes place once a year and hence the songs get limited airtime during the rest of the year.

We found that participating in the ESC and doing badly is better than not participating at all. Thus, there is no public health risk in taking part, as even an abysmal performance would be better than complete absence from the contest. This may be particularly important for the United Kingdom, where a “Eurovision Brexit” is gaining support in response to the country’s consistently terrible performances [3]. Our findings suggest that, if there is an underlying causal link between ESC performance and life satisfaction, in the unlikely event that the UK performs well in the ESC, life satisfaction in the country would significantly improve, but even being the Cry Baby (UK 2003) of the Contest has more public health benefits than Running Scared (Azerbaijan 2011) away from it. Life satisfaction has been associated with lower mortality and morbidity and has been found to have a reciprocal association with mental health problems [8, 11,12,13]. Such public health gains Don’t Come Easy (Australia 2017), therefore Australia’s recent participation in the ESC or the money which the UK pays to the European Broadcasting Union to ensure a place in the final every year may represent good value for money for the public, although the cost-effectiveness of these investments should be further explored.

To our knowledge this is the first study to estimate the association between the ESC and life satisfaction. The availability of individual level data and the large sample size allowed us to adjust for potentially confounding factors; therefore, the authors believe that despite the cross-sectional design of the Eurobarometer surveys, they won’t meet their Waterloo (Sweden 1974) if they make a cautious attempt to hypothesize that there may be a causal association. However, the cross-sectional design of our study precludes any conclusions of causal nature. Even if there was a causal association, the fact that the surveys were conducted shortly after the ESC each year would only allow us to detect short-term effects. Also, we did not take into account the order of appearance; songs appearing towards the end are more likely to receive favourable evaluations [19, 27]. When exploring the association of ESC success with life satisfaction, we only considered country of residence, when it is an established fact that immigrants can play an important role in Eurovision voting, [21, 22] and therefore they might support and be influenced by entries from their home country. The prevalence of mental health disorders, including depression, varies among European countries, [28]; however, we used statistical approaches that account for such country-level variation. Finally, the ecological analysis is subject to ecological fallacy, even though the results were quite consistent between individual and country level analyses.

This study has quantified the potential benefits to life satisfaction and suicide mortality from performance in the ESC. Further research would be required to identify the Secret Combination (Greece 2008) of factors associated with improved performance. This may allow an informed discussion regarding the potential role of such issues in public health.