66.5m Indians watched Sindhu's Rio Olympics match

India had sent the largest-ever squad to an Olympics with 117 participants. PV Sindhu and Sakshi Mallik were the only two sportspersons who returned with medals as against six during the London Olympics in 2012. PV Sindhu's singles final against Carolina Marin attracted nearly 66.5 million people, who watched the game to support her. This is the highest viewership in the country for a single match this Olympics, outdoing the viewership of even popular weekend shows on TV. According to the firm, Sindhu’s final match saw a whoppingrise in viewership — from 16.4 million to 38 million viewers, who watched the live telecast. The 21-year-old badminton player commanded a highly loyal audience from her win at the semi-finals: 57.4 per cent of people who watched her in the semis came back to watch her at the finals.  Apart from these loyal viewers, double the number of viewers tuned in to watch the final showdown.

Sindhu also received strong support from her home city – Hyderabad, which witnessed the second highest viewership among metropolitan cities in India, after Mumbai. Meanwhile as per Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) rating, the Rio Olympics had nearly 228 million impressions on nine TV channels during the two weeks of the games. Recently, the 2016 ICC World T20 created record viewership across India after the tournament was calculated to have been watched by 730 million people. On the other hand, a very encouraging sign from India was that the women's T20 final, which took place simultaneously in 2016 and which was also won by the West Indies women's team, set records for its reach and viewership across the globe with nearly 24.5 million people watched the women's tournament in India.