Brazilians rank top for celebrating New Year’s Eve: Badoo.com global poll

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Brazilians are the nationality that the rest of the world would most like to share New Year’s Eve with, according to an international poll conducted by Badoo.com (www.badoo.com), the world’s largest social network for meeting new people.

“This seems harsh on the Swiss and Belgians”

Brazilians ranked first by a wide margin, in an online poll asking 17,000 people across 17 countries and four continents to pick the nationality that they would most like to join for celebrating New Year’s Eve.

The British placed ninth in the Badoo poll, behind the Americans in second and the Spanish third. The Swiss and Belgians shared last place.

“This seems harsh on the Swiss and Belgians”, says Louise Thompson, Director of PR for Badoo, a site for chatting, flirting, dating and meeting new people, with 168 million users across over 180 countries. “But I can understand that most people would rather celebrate New Year’s on a beach in Brazil than somewhere cold in northern Europe.”

New Year’s Eve in Brazil, what’s more, falls in the middle of summer, which makes the climate perfect for huge, outdoor parties of the kind Brazilians enjoy staging to welcome the new year.

Such festivities are held across Brazil but Rio boasts Brazil’s most famous New Year’s event – the giant gathering on Copacabana beach, attended by some 2.5 million people and widely considered the world’s best New Year’s Eve party.

This makes it over twice as big as America’s biggest New Year’s Eve party, held in Times Square in New York, and several times larger than either of the UK’s two largest – those in London’s Trafalgar Square and Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations.

The Spanish also gather en masse on New Year’s Eve, in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, where revellers listen to the clock chime 12 times, while eating one grape on each chime, to bring prosperity for the new near. The Italians mark New Year’s Eve by staging a mass kiss in Venice’s Piazza San Marco.

None of these gatherings, however, can match Cobacabana’s festivities. The latter are are also famed for their spectacular fireworks display, which ocean liners will often moor nearby to watch.

WORLD’S BEST NATIONALITIES FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE