The European Aquatics Championships Paris 2026 proved massively effective in terms of engaging with its followers.
During the Championships, which ran from July 31 to August 16, a total of 95,218,228 views were recorded across European Aquatics-owned channels.
The comparative figure for the last European Aquatics Championships in Belgrade two years ago was 27,000,000 – representing an overall increase of more than 250%.
One of the highest-viewed pieces of original content from Paris 2026 was a fun TikTok with David Popovici which has over 1 million views on TikTok alone.
This shows that European Aquatics have invested in new forms of media engagement and not just relying on event clips and highlights to generate attention.
France Télévisions has reported surpassing 35 million total viewers across linear channels (France 2, France 3) and digital platforms during their coverage of aquatics events at the Olympic Aquatics Centre and river Seine. The pan-European TV ratings are currently being finalised by our broadcast partner EBU.
An EA survey of the period from July 20 to August 19 this year recorded a total reach of 42 million, of which 12 million was through social media and 30 million through non-social media.
There were a total of 136,000 social media interactions and 130,000 social media reactions (eg likes).
The executive summary reads:
“The monitoring period for Paris 2026 saw a significant surge in activity, with total mentions reaching 3.1k (916% increase) and a remarkable total reach of 41.8M (2478% increase).
“Social media engagement skyrocketed, with 136.1k interactions (4932% increase), driven by 129.8k reactions, 1.8k comments, and 4.6k shares.
“Positive sentiment dominated with 767 mentions (2031% increase), while negative mentions remained low at 41.
“Key events included a spike on 2026-08-03 due to coverage of Neutral Athletes B winning gold and Ranjuo Tomblin’s victory in artistic swimming.
“On August 9 NAB Nelli Chukanivska’s gold in women’s high diving drove a reach of 3.2M.
“On August 12 mentions peaked with posts about Mona McSharry’s silver and Ellen Walshe’s gold for Ireland in swimming, alongside Italy’s Sara Curtis setting a world record in the 50m backstroke.
“Finally, on August 15, Germany’s Johannes Liebmann broke the men’s 1500m freestyle world record, contributing to a reach of 4.4M.
“The majority of mentions came from news (47.5%), X (13.9%), Instagram (9.9%), and other social platforms (8.5%).
“The top authors by share of voice included olympics on Instagram (10.5%, 1.3M reach), Bismillah on Facebook (7.7%, 946.2k reach), and RTEsport on X (5.5%, 674.9k reach).”
Of the respondees, most were within the 25-34 age range, with the 19-24 and 45-54 age ranges featuring as next largest.
In terms of gender, the respondents were almost equally male and female.