Rio table tennis coverage reached over half a billion during the Olympic Games with 371 million Chinese tuning in

A stunning 552 million television viewers watched table tennis at the 2016 Rio Olympics when China dominated the event last summer.

Figures released by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), the world governing body, showed the two top markets were China and Japan, the two countries that also collected the highest number of medals among the 56 participating nations on duty in the Riocentro Pavilion 3 between August 6 and 17.

Television viewer numbers were also high in the United States, India and the host nation Brazil – three countries that did not appear on the medal podium.

China recorded an overall viewership of 372m with no fewer than 13.3m tuning in for the men’s team contest when they beat South Korea 3-0 in the semi-finals.

Meanwhile, in Japan the number of total viewers reached 27.8m with the figure for the United States at 24.9m.