The International Judo Federation has reported a major growth in media coverage for its 2015 World Championships.
This year’s event took place from August 24-30 in Astana, Kazakhstan and the IJF said it was watched by a record number of 193 million television viewers worldwide – a 72-per-cent increase on last year’s championships in Chelyabinsk, Russia.
Over 1,000 hours of television coverage was produced over the week-long event, again a significant increase on the 726 hours produced for the 2014 edition. The IJF said the increase was due to multiple new broadcasting partners associating with the event from new broadcast territories.
The IJF said the championships proved most popular in France and Japan, where cumulative audience figures revealed 77 million and 67 million people watched the action on television respectively.
Internet streaming also helped attract a new audience, with 2.5 million people watching events on ippon.tv, the IJF’s official channel.
“The remarkable quality of action on display has gone a long way in attracting more sports fans to live coverage of judo and created greater understanding of the sport,” IJF president Marius Vizer said.