A total of 46 organisations - consisting of Olympic International Federations and other selective bodies, such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Olympic Channel - followed the insidethegames Twitter account.

This compares with 43 for Around The Rings, 36 for NBC Olympics, 29 for Sportcal and 28 for BBC Sport.

insidethegames.biz had also finished top in last year's rankings. 

It forms part of a study undertaken by Burson-Marsteller and TSE Consulting into the social media presence of sporting bodies.

World football’s governing body FIFA finished top of a list for the most Twitter followers, with 19,309,646, in front of the IOC with 8,143,842, and World Rugby with 495,866.

The International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and International Cycling Union were fourth and fifth with 428,480 and 363,207 respectively.

The IOC finished comfortably clear in terms of Facebook comments, likes and shares with 11,191,588.

FIBA, the Olympic Channel, the International Table Tennis Federation and the International Judo Federation occupied the next four places with respective totals of 7,065,839, 3,333,005, 1,643,555 and 1,525,715 at the time the report was compiled.

The World Baseball Softball Confederation was the "most effective" on Twitter, with every post being retweeted an average of 386 times.

FIFA was the "most active" with an average of 17.11 tweets per day.

International Association of Athletics Federations President Sebastian Coe was the most followed official on Twitter, with 123,151 followers.

World Rugby chief executive Brett Gosper was a distant second with 13,565.

The Presidents and chief executives of 23 of the 40 International Federations have personal Twitter profiles - but only 17 of these are active.

The full 2017 Olympic Ranking can be found here.