Paralympic Games An Online Triumph
London 2012 Paralympic Games proved to be a huge online success with record-breaking figures for its website and social media channels.
According to figures released by the International Paralympic Committee nearly two million people visited the official website throughout the Games. Day one of the competition saw more online hits than the whole of the Beijing Games, a trend that continued throughout London 2012.
One in six visitors came from the host country, with USA, Germany, Poland and Canada making up the top five visiting countries.
The IPC’s YouTube channel furthered these record breaking figures receiving nearly nine million views for videos of sporting action and medal ceremonies.
Additionally, the IPC Facebook pages received over 82m views during the Games and Google+ and Flickr pages made live prior to the Opening Ceremony now have over 50,000 followers and page views respectively.
The Paralympic Games also dominated Twitter with the IPC’s account doubling in size and over 1.5 million tweets mentioned ‘Paralympic’ during Games time.
The huge online success increased the profile of Paralympic athletes who also saw significant growth in their individual social media pages, as a result of their performances.
Johnnie Peacock, Great Britain’s golden boy, saw his Facebook page grow by 3,258% over the 12 days of competition while Hannah Cockcroft, a double gold medallist, recorded 381% growth in her Twitter following.
Winning four golds for Great Britain Sarah Storey also saw her Twitter followers grow by 178%.
Craig Spence, the IPC’s director of communications, said: ‘We said prior to the Games that we expected London 2012 to be a digital Games, however these numbers have surpassed our expectations.
‘By embracing new technologies and media it is not just the IPC who enjoyed astronomical figures during the greatest Paralympic Games ever but so have international sport federations, National Paralympic Committees and LOCOG.
‘One of our objectives for London 2012 was to raise the profile of leading athletes. In terms of social media we appear to have achieved this with many athletes enjoying significant growth in their Facebook and Twitter followings.’
