An astonishing 62 hours was broadcasted on CCTV5 during the LIEBHERR 2013 World Table Tennis Championships with the two Singles Finals being the second and third most watched sports programs on China's CCTV in 2013 so far.
The Men's Singles Final, featuring ZHANG Jike (CHN) and WANG Hao (CHN), had a unique viewership of 36.6 million people, and the Women's Singles Final between LI Xiaoxia (CHN) and LIU Shiwen (CHN) was watched by an astonishing 50 million Chinese table tennis fans.
To put these figures in perspective, the two Table Tennis Finals attracted a higher audience than the AFC Asian Cup men football qualifier featuring China v Iraq, which now ranks fourth in 2013, the NBA, and English Premier League matches in 2013.
The Men's Singles Semi Finals and Women's Doubles Finals were also widely viewed. This means that the LIEBHERR 2013 World Championships now holds four out of the top eight most viewed sporting programs in 2013 in China.
In addition to CCTV, Eurosport broke their record for coverage of the world's premium Table Tennis event, showing a total of 32.5 hours on both Eurosport and Eurosport 2.
The Championships were also seen live in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Chinese Taipei, USA, Mexico, right across Africa through Al Jazeera, plus many more, which made it the most widely distributed table tennis event in history outside the Olympic Games.
The excitement for the 52nd World Championships was not limited to TV, with 2,272 different media articles across radio, print and Internet being published in the host country of France alone.
It was also the first big social World Table Tennis Championships with the event being liked, shared, tweeted, viewed and commented across the globe.
ITTF videos on YouTube received 2.65 million views and were watched for 10.25 million minutes over the 2 weeks of the championships.
The official ITTF hashtag for the event #ITTFWorlds, was used by thousands prior, during and after the event, and ITTF's Facebook page received 2.8 million page impressions over Paris 2013.
All of this in an eight day period! Bring on the next edition of the World Table Tennis Championships in Tokyo, Japan in 2014.
For more information contact: ITTF's Promotion Manager Matt Pound at mpound@ittf.com.
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