The real big game Sunday: The Super Bowl trounced porn
According to a study by PornHub, the amount of porn consumed nationwide during the big game was down by 6 percent. And then it went right back up after the game ended.
If there was any question about whether football or porn is more popular, a study produced after the Super Bowl leaves little to the imagination.
According to PornHub, visits to its giant archive of free porn were down 6 percent nationwide during the Super Bowl on Sunday. As the site pointed out in a blog post, that's a significant number in a country of more than 300 million people.
The numbers were even starker in Denver and Seattle, the home cities for the combatants in the big game, won by the Seattle Seahawks 43-8. PornHub concluded that there was a 51 percent drop in traffic from Denver during the game, and a 61 percent drop from Seattle. Perhaps that reflected more confidence on the part of Seahawks fans? Certainly, post-game attitudes could be seen through PornHub's stats. In Denver, despondent fans turned back to PornHub at a clip of plus-11 percent over normal, while partying Seattle fans kept away from PornHub at a rate of minus-17 percent.
Indeed, porn lovers nationwide were waiting for the game to end to get their XXX on. "When the final whistle blew, we saw positive traffic spikes across the US (4 percent), in Denver (11 percent) as well as a 3 percent rise in Canada," PornHub wrote, "and 1 percent worldwide. Contrarily, Seattle continued celebrating well into the night with a 17 percent drop until midnight, when it returned to Sunday norms."
Of course, for Denver fans watching their team get manhandled by Seattle -- the score was 22-0 at halftime -- departing for sexier pastures may have been an attractive option even as Bruno Mars was rocking MetLife Stadium.
So how does this all compare to other big events? According to PornHub, its traffic went up by 5 percent in the US during Felix Baumgartner's record-setting space jump (maybe because people were already on their computers?); but it went down 5 percent during the airing of the finale of "American Idol" 2012. In Canada, there was a 9 percent dive during the release of the iPhone 5. Go figure.