Pornhub Insights has covered traffic changes during the NBA finals a few times now (see our 2017, 2016, 2015 results) and each time the Golden State Warriors have been included in the data alongside the Cleveland Cavaliers. We often find that traffic to Pornhub drops down during live sporting events, especially in the cities that are home to the playing teams.
This year it was the Toronto Raptors that scratched their way through the division and semi-finals to appear in their first NBA finals against the Golden State Warriors. It would seem that Raptor fans were anxious to see their team doing so well as traffic in Toronto dropped a massive -47% during the final match! Traffic in the San Francisco Bay area was also down by an impressive -18% at the end of the game.
After the game ended, traffic in San Francisco increased +8% above average. As Toronto’s fans were still celebrating their win, Pornhub’s traffic stayed -7% below average, then surged an incredible +24% higher than normal at 1am!
If you’ve read our recent Top 20 Cities Insights, you’ll know that Toronto is the 16th highest source of Pornhub Traffic so this represents a large fluctuation in viewers during Pornhub’s peak daily traffic period.
Perhaps more impressive, traffic across all of Canada was down by -31% in the final hour while the United States dropped by -10%. U.S. traffic also increased by +6% after the game, and Canada’s traffic was +11% above normal levels at 1am.
According to our 2018 Year in Review, the United States is Pornhub’s number one source of traffic, while Canada ranks fifth, so these changes represent millions of people turning away from porn to watch some live ball play.
Finals Game One
During Game 1 of the finals on May 30th, Toronto’s traffic had dropped by -19% when compared to an average day.
Toronto traffic jumped an equally massive 16% after the game ended as fans were looking to celebrate their win. Traffic in the San Francisco Bay Area dropped by only -7% near the beginning of the game and then slowly returned to normal levels by the end of the match.
Our statisticians looked back at the previous games which led Toronto’s Raptors to the final. During the Eastern Conference Game 6 against the Bucks, Toronto traffic dropped by -15% while Milwaukee traffic dropped by -8%. We again saw a similar spike in Toronto traffic by 9% after the match ended.
Finally, we looked at the Division Final Game 7 against the Philadelphia 76ers and found that Toronto traffic was again down an impressive -12% during the game.
To see how football fans compare to basketball, check out our 2019 Super Bowl Insights.