Budapest 2023: Athletics engages 28.5 billion in nine days
Budapest 2023: Athletics engages 28.5 billion in nine days
With so many brilliant storylines, online and offline, the
Budapest 2023 World Athletics Championships will go down as the most engaging edition in the history of the sport.
After nearly one million website visitors a day in the first seven days, Budapest had already surpassed previous visitor numbers for a World Championships.
The popularity of the website’s live results platform continues to grow. On day one, traffic was more than double that for any previous event. At peak times, the website received over 400,000 requests per minute, and up to 14 million per hour.
Over the nine days of the championships, 14,000 news articles have been published for a reach of 28.5 billion.
A record number of more than 1200 accredited broadcast personnel from 46 broadcasters, as well as 850 accredited media and photographers from 75 countries, have covered the championships.
Rights-holding broadcasters report that huge audiences are tuning in from all over the world and there are impressive peak numbers in key markets such as Germany, the UK, France and Finland.
TBS in Japan reported after the first weekend that their coverage reached 28 million people at some point during the broadcast. These numbers are expected to grow as more data is collated.
Social media platforms passed the milestone of 11 million followers during the championships, and more than 38,000 people visited the Museum of World Athletics exhibition in the Etele Plaza in Budapest.
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said: “Together with the Budapest Organising Committee we have created a new standard for our outdoor World Championships going forward. It is the new blueprint. We have seen full stadia which creates an electric atmosphere, we have had the highest-ever number of participating athletes, we have witnessed jaw-dropping and nail-biting performances, and we have had huge audiences as a result.
“Innovation has been a driving force for these championships. They have had more innovation embedded in them than we have seen in the last decade. From a medal plaza where athletes are treated like rock stars, to the awarding of coaches’ medals, striking branding that can be seen across the city, and a clear sustainability vision. This is a World Championships city and a country with a long-term, ambitious vision for sport and a legacy that goes way beyond a nine-day competition.
“Together with the Hungarian government, and science and technology institutions like the Hungarian University of Sport Sciences, we are drawing up plans to create a permanent World Athletics Centre of Coaching Excellence, which will be housed at the National Athletics Centre. This centre will broaden access to world-class coaching around the world and carry out research in sports science, medicine, biometrics, AI, sports equipment and other areas that can help advance and support our pool of super-talented athletes and coaches.”
Earlier on Sunday, the newly elected gender-equal World Athletics Council had its first meeting in Budapest and Colombia’s Ximena Restrepo was confirmed as the Senior Vice President to Coe, becoming the first woman to take that role.
