Wrestling enjoys record viewership for 2015 World Championships in Las Vegas
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by Tim Foley United World Wrestling
| Abdulrashid Sadulaev (RUS) won his second consecutive World Championship in Las Vegas. Photo: Tony Rotundo, United World Wrestling |
CORSIER-SUR-VEVEY, Switzerland – The numbers are in and the 2015 Wrestling World Championships, which wrapped earlier this month in Las Vegas, were the most-viewed non-Olympic event in the sport’s history.
The competition drew a record-smashing 3 million visitors to the United World Wrestling website with more than 16 million page views across six days of competition. The daily traffic of 2.8 million views was higher than all of the site’s combined traffic in 2013 or 2014.
Broadcasters from 16 countries also paid to show competition footage of the world championships, providing the event to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 1 billion.
The World Championships welcomed more than 800 wrestlers from 99 nations across six days of competition at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas. The championships, which were hosted by USA Wrestling for the first time since 2003, were the first qualification event for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, with 108 athletes from 37 nations and 5 continents earning weight class allocations for their home nation.
The 2015 championships were also an in-venue success with the sold out Orleans Arena generating a record $1.1 million in ticket sales for USA Wrestling.
To review all the weight class qualifiers for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro please visit www.UnitedWorldWrestling.org.
