The snooker world championship was watched by 210 million viewers on China's national TV, world snooker said on Wednesday.

The tournament finished on Monday with Mark Selby winning the title for a second time, beating Ding Junhui 18-14 in the final. China's Ding became the first Asian player to reach the final of the sport's biggest tournament.

And his success was closely followed by viewers in his homeland as, across the 17 days of the event, 210 million tuned in.

The afternoon session of the final was watched by over 42 million on CCTV5 on both Sunday and Monday, despite the time difference which meant that coverage ran from after 9pm until after midnight on both days. These were the highest sports audiences for post-prime time program in 2016 so far.

The total global audience for the tournament was over 300 million.

The BBC televised a total of 183 hours of snooker during the event, an increase of 36 hours on last year. The peak audience was 3.9 million, while the average live audience of 853,000 showed an increase of 14.8 per cent on 2015.