Sports That Saw a Spike in Popularity During the 2020 Olympics

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To find out which sports have seen sudden popularity, we checked the search volumes for all sports featured in the Olympics, from August 2017 to July 2021. This gave us a good perspective on the search/interest trends for each type of sport.

Olympic disciplines with the highest peaks of interest
While it’s generally not easy to attribute search volume spikes directly to the Olympics, some sports do allow us to spot a connection.

We found the sports that saw a spike in search england whatsapp number volume in July 2021 and added month-over-month changes in search interest (June 2021 vs. July 2021) to the mix to see which sports potentially owe their meteoric rise in popularity to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. They’re all listed in the table below:

Olympic discipline

Of the sports that were added to the Olympics only this summer – skateboarding, karate, sport climbing, surfing, and softball/baseball – July 2021 was also the best month in terms of public interest for the last three months.

Olympic disciplines with a decreasing trend of interest during the Olympics
June saw several major sporting events such as Euro 2020, Roland Garros and part of the Wimbledon series, and some sports such as football, tennis and boxing saw their search interest numbers drop during the Olympics. All three disciplines saw their search volumes fall by 18% month-on-month.

Which athletes stole the show and got the biggest push online?


While interest in tennis as a sport did not increase during the Olympics, the same cannot be said for tennis players.

Below, you can see a list of the 20 most searched for gold and silver medalists online. We also looked at their audience size on Twitter and Facebook during the Games — to see if gold medals directly translate into more followers.

Top 20 Gold Medalists by Total Social Media Audience (July-August 2021 Stats)