The ITTF has celebrated a major social media milestone having achieved two million followers, including more than 400,000 on Facebook ©Facebook

The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) has reached two million followers across its Chinese and English social media platforms.

The milestone was reached following strong engagement at this year's World Table Tennis Championships, held from May 29 to June 5 in Düsseldorf, Germany.

The World Championships, the biggest table tennis event of the year, reached more than 10.3 million fans on Facebook over eight days of competition, the ITTF claim. 

Together with the ITTF World Tour events that followed, the event pushed the ITTF Facebook page's following to 400,000.

The ITTF's social media has greatly benefited from the popularity of the sport and its stars in China, which is claimed to have "skyrocketed" after last year's Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. 

The ITTF's Weibo account, which currently has more than 1.3 million fans, stands at the second highest of all International Federations on the Chinese platform.

Major table tennis events are said to have helped with social media interest ©Getty Images
Major table tennis events are said to have helped with social media interest ©Getty Images

"It is pleasing to see us hit over two million social media fans around the world," said the ITTF's head of communications Matt Pound.

"This shows the appetite for fans to consume the ITTF's content and the popularity of table tennis globally. 

"We look forward to continuing building our fan base and extending the reach of table tennis globally."

The two million social media followers include just over 400,000 on Facebook, along with 39,000 on Twitter, 110,000 on Instagram and 200,000 Youtube subscribers.

There are also 1,365,000 on Weibo as well as 28,060 on Wechat, 1,500 on Tencent Video and 58,540 on Zhibo TV.