The folks at PolicyMic asked the Pornhub Statisticians to take a look at how the televised UEFA Champions League Final affected traffic to Pornhub. The final match was between two teams based in Madrid, Spain: Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid so we expected to see some major traffic changes in this region.
The game lasted 132 minutes between 8:45pm Central European time and 11:15pm, with a 15 minute halftime. Although traffic drops were significant across Spain, Madrid showed the biggest traffic drops compared to Pornhub traffic on an average Saturday night. By mid-match traffic was down nearly 50%.
In the hours before the match started, traffic was actually up 15% – so clearly fans were looking to score a quick Pornhub fix before tuning in. By the start of the match, it was already down 20% and continued on from there. Around half-time, the traffic started to increase again.
Clearly Madrilenos (yes, we looked that up) were most interested in the match, but other cities followed closely too. Malaga came closest to Madrids level of interest while Barcelona, Seville and Valencia showed the next biggest traffic drops, each over 30%.
After the match, traffic from Madrid was up slightly higher than Saturday averages, but fans in Barcelona and Valencia were clearly waiting to get their Pornhub fix with increases of 15%.
We have seen similar traffic fluctuations during major sporting events like the 2014 Superbowl and the 2013 Stanley Cup final.