FINA, the world governing body for 6 aquatic disciplines (swimming, open water swimming, diving, high diving, water polo, and synchronized swimming), has been pleased with the early impression of the 2017 World Aquatics Championships.
The event, which began on July 14th, has already given out 31 medals in diving, sycnhro, and open water competitions.
“The entire FINA Family is very happy and excited to be in Hungary for this great celebration of Aquatic sports. For the next 16 days, our best athletes will once more delight the thousands of spectators filling the venues and the many millions of TV viewers in the five continents,”FINA President Dr Julio C. Maglione remarked on the opening of the event. “They will confirm the appeal of our six disciplines and the strength of Aquatics.”
The performances will be amazing, and new stars will certainly appear at the highest level. In Kazan 2015, we had 6.8 billion cumulative TV viewers in the five continents, and we expect to do even better here in Budapest,” Executive Director Cornel Marculescu stated. SwimSwam has tried, but been unable to, confirm those numbers.
All-Sports Medals Table Through July 17th synchro events, with 2 diving awards still to come on Monday:
| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  China |
3 | 3 | 0 | 6 |
| 2 |  Russia |
3 | 2 | 0 | 5 |
| 3 |  France |
2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| 4 |  Italy |
1 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| 5 |  Australia |
1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 6 |  Great Britain |
0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
 North Korea |
0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| 8 |  Ecuador |
0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
 Spain |
0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | |
| 10 |  Ukraine |
0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| 11 |  Brazil |
0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
 Malaysia |
0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
 United States |
0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
| Total | 10 | 10 | 11 | 31 | |
I’m very skeptical of that stat, the NBA play offs don’t get 6 billion cummalative views. Maybe 6.8 million?
They’ve used the stat several times, so they seem convinced of it. My guess is that 1) it’s the number of times that people clicked in/on to the event across all two weeks, including TV and YouTube, 2) it includes inflated numbers from some of our friends who might have enormous populations and might be trying to curry favor in future votes, or 3) it’s the total number of people who could have watched it had they wanted to.
Crap. I was part of the 10% of the planet that forgot to tune in to the last one.