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For the Olympic sport: snowboarding-How many athletes are there? How many people watch it during the Olympics and after the Olympics? How many events are there per year?
Hello! Thank you for your request to provide insight into the Olympic sport, snowboarding. The short version is that there are at least 400 snowboarders that compete in snowboarding events across the world, in 2014, 243 athletes competed at the Sochi Winter Olympics. Viewership for snowboarding during the 2014 Sochi Olympics recorded an estimated 354,270,000 viewers. Annually there are 183 snowboarding events (including the FIS World Cup) drawing a cumulative audience of 198.59 million viewers.
METHODOLOGY
I have scoured the Internet for articles, papers and statistics related to this subject.
Data on the 2014 winter Olympics, in Sochi, Russia, was used during this response, since this is the most recent installment of the competition.
The exact viewership for snowboarding was not available, but from information provided by the International Olympic Committee, I estimated the Olympic viewership.
NUMBER OF ATHLETES
During the 2014 winter Olympics, 31 countries competed in snowboarding events, this amounted to 243 athletes. This was up from 185 athletes and 27 countries in 2010. This increase is largely due to the addition of four new snowboarding events during the Sochi Olympics, namely Me's and Womens Snowboard Slopestyle and Parallel Slalom.
GOVERNING BODIES
There are two federations involved in the sport of snowboarding:
1 - The World Snowboard Federation (WSF): A non-profit organization dedicated to the growth of the sport, internationally.
2 - Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS) - The officially recognized federation of ski-sports in the world
AUDIENCE
According to the 2014 Olympic Marketing Fact File, the total audience for the Winter Olympics was 2.1 billion people, for a combined broadcast hours of 114,000. Since the only country that viewership information was available for was the US, I extrapolated this data to estimate global viewership. According to TV by the Numbers, 151 million Americans watched the Sochi Olympics, while Nielsen reports that 25,469,008 watched snowboarding. This equates to 16.87%. If we apply this to the total viewership of 2.1 billion, we estimate that:
2,100,000,000 * 0.1687 = 354,270,000 people watched the 2014 Winter Olympics broadcast of snowboarding.
NUMBER OF EVENTS PER YEAR
There are 183 events in the competitive snowboarding calender, which kicked off on the 3rd of December 2016, including the FIS World Cup.
The FIS World Cup report states that the cumulative audience for the 2015/2016 world cup reached a total, global viewership of 198,59 million (of which 5.77 million is live). An in-depth representation of participating countries is available from the source. Since the World Cup is stretched over several events, it is entirely feasible that other snowboarding events mentioned in the calender will draw the same audience.
The average number of riders that compete in such events ranges from 50 to around 400 for large events. Which would suggest that there are at least 400 competitive snowboarders globally.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, there are at least 400 snowboarders that compete in snowboarding events across the world, in 2014, 243 athletes competed at the Sochi Winter Olympics. Viewership for snowboarding during the 2014 Sochi Olympics recorded an estimated 354,270,000 viewers. Annually there are 183 snowboarding events (including the FIS World Cup) drawing a cumulative audience of 198.59 million viewers.
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