A total of 34 organisations - consisting of Olympic International Federations and other selective bodies, such as the International Olympic Committee and the Olympic Channel - followed the insidethegames Twitter account.

This compares with 30 for Around The Rings, 26 for NBC Olympics, 22 for Sportcal and 19 for BBC Sport.

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

Football body FIFA finished top of a list for the most Twitter followers, with 9,567,158, in front of the Olympics, with 5,628,977, and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) with 327,417.

The International Cycling Union and World Rugby were fourth and fifth, with 310,000 and 267,408 respectively.

The Olympics finished comfortably clear in terms of Facebook "likes", with 15,080,245.

FIBA, FIFA, the Olympic Channel and the International Hockey Federation occupied the next four places with respective hauls of 3,334,637, 3,165,937, 1,783,807 and 1,001,238 at the time the report was compiled.

The Olympics were also the "most effective" on Twitter, with every post being retweeted an average of 467 times.

The International Volleyball Federation were the "most active" with an average of 39 tweets per day.

International Association of Athletics Federations President Sebastian Coe was the most followed official on Twitter, with 110,487 followers.

International Cycling Union counterpart Brian Cookson was a distant second with 28,232.

Only a third of the Presidents and chief executives of the 35 international sports federations have personal Twitter profiles - and only 12 of these are active.

Former FIFA boss Sepp Blatter, for point of comparison, has more than 2.5 million followers on his Twitter account. 

Successor Gianni Infantino does not yet have an official Twitter presence but the survey claims there are "at least 10 fake and parody accounts in his name".

The full 2016 Olympic Ranking can be found here.