The European Champions League final match took place on June 1st, 2019 with Liverpool beating Tottenham 2 to 0. Because this years match was between two United Kingdom clubs, Gizmodo asked our statisticians to take a look at how traffic across the U.K. was affected as fans dropped everything (including porn) to watch their favorite team play.
Liverpool had by far the biggest traffic drop during the game-time. Preparations started early with traffic dropping by 14% two hours before the match, and reaching 32% below average at 9pm. London is one of Pornhub’s highest traffic cities, so a 10% drop at 9pm was quite significant. Manchester traffic went as low as 11% below average and Birmingham was down 9% when the game started.
After the match ended, traffic in London and Birmingham was above average by 9% and 8% respectively. Liverpool traffic was slower to recover, possibly because fans were out celebrating their team’s win.
Our statisticians found similar changes across the U.K.’s countries. Northern Ireland traffic was down by 18% at the beginning of the match, while England and Wales dropped -10% and Scotland by -9% below that of a typical Saturday evening.
It wasn’t just U.K. fans tuning in to watch their teams. We found traffic drops in most European countries even if their countries didn’t make the final.
From 8pm to 10pm, Finland’s traffic was down by -16%, Switzerland by -12.7% and Greece by -11.3%. Overall, U.K. traffic dropped by -9.3% during the game.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of Pornhub Insights. To see how other sporting events affect traffic, check out our Super Bowl and NBA Finals posts.