ABSTRACT
The ESC constitutes an unparalleled phenomenon, including in the academic world. This is not the circumstantial result of pure chance: its characteristics, accentuated and renewed, have allowed it to become the subject of academic study from multiple perspectives. Its nature as a TV programme explains its presence in the field of media studies. It is also logical, given that it is a song contest, that there are references to it in artistic and cultural studies. Its singular trajectory in the second half of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first, as well as its international dimension, have made it an object of study in the areas of history, politics and international relations. In addition, the show's voting system generates a great deal of data which can be used in analytical studies. Lastly, the ESC has become a cultural phenomenon in a wider sense, reaching the areas of economics and business as well as the socio-legal field. In short, the main aim of this chapter is to provide an outline of the influence of the ESC in a number of different areas of academic knowledge, relating its reach to the show's major identifiable traits.
