Member Associations | 10 Apr 2018

ITTF's Social Media Ranked Second Best Out of All Olympic Sports

The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) has been ranked second on the 2018 #SportOnSocial Ranking chart by REDTORCH which analyzes the presence and performance of 35 IOC recognized International Sport Federations on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube between 1 March 2017 to 28 February 2018.

The ITTF, who has now over 2.6 million social media fans around the world, has climbed eight places from 2017 to settle at second place in the 2018 ranking, finishing second on both Facebook and Youtube after World Rugby.

ITTF President Thomas WEIKERT stated "It was one of my promises to continue developing ITTF's media and promotional efforts and I am thrilled to see that my team's hard work and dedication is rewarded in being shown second in this social index. We will continue to focus on media and promotion and I look forward to seeing even more growth over the next 12 months."

Jonny MURCH, CEO of REDTORCH, said "The ITTF had a strong year on social media climbing 8 places in the Rankings Table from 2017, partly due to the impact of their 2017 World Championships in Düsseldorf. ITTF were also the best performing Summer Olympic International Federation by Engagement Rate on Facebook and Instagram."

The ITTF Facebook page was ranked fourth in engagement rate, after International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, International Luge Federation and World Curling Federation who competed at the Winter Olympic Games in Pyongchang. Whereas the ITTF Instagram account came in third on the engagement rate chart, with several hot shots from the Seamaster 2017 ITTF World Tour and Champion selfies getting more likes and comments from table tennis fans, while the ITTF Twitter account finishing at fifth on engagement rate.

The ITTF Youtube Channel also generated one of the highest engagement rates with the match highlights of the World Championships final between Ma Long and Fan Zhendong garnering most engagement from fans.

ITTF Head of Media Matt POUND also added "This news is another big achievement by the ITTF since new leadership came into place 12 months ago. This amazing result is a credit to our small, but young and motivated team whose hard work and innovative ideas has catapulted us up the social rankings. The ITTF has already increased our social offerings in 2018 starting a Japanese twitter page to service our Japanese fans, and we plan to break our all our engagement records at the upcoming World Table Tennis Championships in Sweden and crack the three million fan barrier and bring table tennis to the world."

The Liebherr 2018 World Team Table Tennis Championships will be held in Halmstad, Sweden later this month from 29 April to 6 May 2018, and will aim to break records on all of ITTF's social media platforms.

ITTF Social Media Following:

Facebook: 464,000 followers
Instagram: 133,400 followers
Twitter: 44,700 followers
Weibo: 1,560,000 followers
Wechat: 27,700 subscribers
Youtube: 224,500 subscribers
tv.ITTF.com: 81,000 subscribers
zhibo.tv: 105,260 subscribers