Welcome to Around the Table, our series of articles on our work to promote and support table tennis around the country. In this edition, we take a look the PG Mutual National Championships, with a focus on some of the numbers the event generated.

So, how many people watched the championships at the venue and on television?

There were 1,282 ticket-holders across the three days of the event, with the bulk of tickets – more than 950 – being sold online. This contrasts with a total of 99 tickets sold online for the 2015 championships.

The audience figures from ITV4 say 120,000 people watched live – which does not included those watching on the +1 channel or those who recorded the coverage to watch later. The live coverage on the Table Tennis England website comprised approximately 27-and-a-half hours of streaming and was watched by more than 23,000 people, totalling 5,384 hours of viewing between them.

Elsewhere on our website, at the time of writing a total of 9,101 people have read the daily reports online. A total number of 7,370 people visited the website on Sunday – up from 5,680 on the corresponding day of last year’s championships.

Incidentally, more than 100,000 people have visited our website in the past 30 days – driven by the England Leopards’ performance at the World Team Championships and the PG Mutual Nationals. This is the second-best 30-day figure in our history, the best being in March 2013.

After the event, a total number of 44 press releases were sent out to a combination of news organisations, including the BBC, Sky Sports, various national newspapers and the local media of the champions and runners-up in various categories, plus a couple of other stories of local interest to particular players.

What about the social media reach?

A total of 736 tweets using the #PGMutualNationals hashtag were sent over the three days, reaching 53,112 Twitter accounts and generating 469,370 impressions.

On Facebook, our posts over the weekend reached more than 39,000 people and generated 387 likes. The five posts which included video were watched a combined 3,311 times.

Any other interesting facts and figures about the event?

We had 87 players competing at Hatfield, across all competitions. They played a total of 147 matches.

On the organising side, we had a team of 31 volunteers and 21 on the referees and umpires team.

What feedback have you received from spectators?

All ticket-holders were sent a survey by email. At the time of writing, just under 100 had been received back. Of those:

• 97.6% said they would attend the event again
• 96.5% rated the event as either ‘good value for money’ or ‘just about right’
• 90.8% rated their overall experience of the event, on a scale of 1 to 10, as between 7 and 10.

We are continuing to receive feedback and are also encouraging more ticket-holders to complete the survey. Once we have received as many as we can, we will analyse the data and responses and help to make future events even better.

Can we attend more events like this?

Yes, in the autumn we will be hosting home England Leopards qualifying matches for the 2017 European Championships. These include England Leopards men taking on Greece in Stoke on November 1. More venues will be announced in the next few weeks. You can find out more by clicking here