Maybe the whole world really will be watching today’s Super Bowl? At the very least, we’re willing to give up some of our porn viewing for the big game. Last year, in fact, Super Bowl Sunday Pornhub traffic was down 24 percent from that of a “typical Sunday.”
But our knowledge of what the Super Bowl does to our libido/masturbatory habits doesn’t stop there. Given our seemingly endless affinity for both data and porn, the Pornhub Insight team has been tracking our Super Bowl Sunday porn-consumption habits for the last five Super Bowls, three of which, of course, involved Tom Brady and the Patriots (just like this year’s game). Here then is the most interesting stuff that they’ve found…
Super Bowl 52
The Game: The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots 41-33 and captured their first Super Bowl title (presumably making that Silver Linings Playbook family super proud).
The Porn: Increases in Super Bowl-related searches skyrocketed, although I’m not sure what kind of porn people hoped to find with these search terms…
- “Super Bowl” (up 2,781 percent)
- “Halftime” (up 2,115 percent)
- “Tom Brady” (up 1,620 percent)
- “Blitz” and “touchdown” (each up well over 800 percent)
In contrast, searches for “cheerleader,” an ostensibly more relevant term in the porn universe, only went up 19 percent (though “cheerleader orgy” searches shot up 337 percent). And while searches for “Gisele,” referring to Brady’s wife Gisele Bündchen, increased 404 percent, it was still far less of an increase than those for Brady — again, more than 1,600 percent. (In fairness, however, she’s probably someone porn consumers are searching for throughout the year, and not just on the holy day that is the Super Bowl.)
Justin Timberlake’s halftime show also seemed to stir a longing for nostalgia, or as Pornhub Insight puts it, “Even though Janet Jackson was absent from this year’s halftime show, her searches increased by 565 percent above their daily average.” Meanwhile: “Janet’s former halftime partner Justin Timberlake saw his searches increase by 344 percent.”
Super Bowl 51
The Game: The Patriots overcame a 28-3 deficit to beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 in overtime.
The Porn: The top five search terms that increased in popularity were…
- “Super Bowl” (up 2,451 percent)
- “Halftime” (up 2,432 percent)
- “Patriots” (up 1,608 percent)
- “Blitz” (up 955 percent)
- “Lady Gaga” (up 598 percent)
Not all states tuned in equally though. While porn viewing was down 43 percent in Rhode Island and Massachusetts (home to most of the country’s Patriot fans), it was only down 17 percent in Oklahoma and 15 percent in Alabama. Everybody, however, got back in the, um, game once overtime eneded, with viewership numbers “not just returning to normal levels, but reaching 9 percent above average at 11 p.m.”
Super Bowl 50
The Game: The Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers 24-10 in kind of a ho-hum affair that mostly involved the final moments of Peyton Manning’s career and Cam Newton being harassed by a ferocious Denver pass rush.
The Porn: Super Bowl, up 4,842 percent, was the only usual suspect. The others were all over the map, and in some cases (Ben Affleck???), only tangentially related to the game…
- “Ben Affleck” (up 3,873 percent, likely Pornhub Insight notes because of his appearance in a Turkish Airlines commercial)
- “Football gangbang (up 1,270 percent)
- “Beyonce look alike” (up 844 percent)
- “Football girl” (up 682 percent)
- “Lingerie football (up 464 percent)
Interestingly, the Insight team writes, “Although both genders have a similar drop as the game begins, it would seem that proportionately men are more willing to give up porn in favor of football. The traffic drop for women reached a low of 23 percent and stayed relatively flat until the game ended. After that, traffic from women returned to normal levels, but more men visited Pornhub than would be usual.”
Super Bowl 49
The Game: Affleck’s beloved Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks 28-24.
The Porn: Pornhub reports that although traffic dipped throughout the game per usual, it returned to normal during Katy Perry’s halftime performance, unlike in 2018, when most viewers remained offline during Lady Gaga’s halftime show. Though why this is the case is open to interpretation. Pornhub’s not-exactly-evolved guess:
“Across the board, a slight relief from these overall game time traffic dips is noted around the mid-game mark when Ms. Perry was putting on her highly anticipated half time show which proved to be devoid of any nip slips. Despite the lack of wardrobe malfunctions, she did seem to do a pretty good job in getting the masses riled up, as these numbers suggest that viewers rubbed a quick one out then tuned back in for the last two quarters.”
Either way, it’s surely a new test in the battle for Pop Diva Domination.
Super Bowl 48
The Game: The Seahawks beat the Broncos in a 43-8 blowout.
The Porn: People in both Denver and Seattle significantly refrained from porn during the game, with Pornhub traffic down 61 percent in Seattle and 51 percent in Denver. (Overall, Pornhub traffic dipped 29 percent in the U.S. during the game.) Afterwards, Bronco fans consoled themselves with porn much more quickly than Seahawk fans, who found other ways to express their elation. Or as the Pornhub Insight’s crew notes, “When the final whistle blew, we saw positive traffic spikes across the U.S. (4 percent), in Denver (11 percent) as well as a 3 percent rise in Canada, 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.”
But then again, they hadn’t been yanked around enough by their favorite team to do a little yanking of their own.
Tierney Finster
Tierney Finster is a journalist, screenwriter, actor and model from Los Angeles, California. She is a contributing writer at MEL, specializing in love, sex, mental health, drugs, queer culture and the cannabis industry. She has written for publications such as Playboy, Purple, Dazed and Confused, Jezebel and Broadly and was the key researcher behind Sex On, HBO’s revival of its iconoclastic docu-series Real Sex.
