United World Wrestling, the sport’s global governing body, has said the 2015 Wrestling World Championships has become the most-viewed non-Olympic event in its history.
The Championships took place from September 7-12 in the US city of Las Vegas and UWW said broadcasters from 16 countries paid to show competition footage, providing the event to an estimated potential worldwide audience of more than 1bn.
The governing body streamed live coverage of every match from the event via its official website. The competition drew a record three million visitors to the UWW website with more than 16m page views across six days of competition. The daily traffic of 2.8m views was higher than all of the site’s combined traffic in 2013 or 2014.
The World Championships welcomed more than 800 wrestlers from 99 nations at the Orleans Arena and was the first qualification event for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
UWW added that the 2015 championships saw a sold-out Orleans Arena, generating a record $1.1m (€973,000) in ticket sales for USA Wrestling.