One Look at Internet Porn Traffic During the World Cup Final Proves Soccer Rules the Planet

It should come as no surprise that Germans and Argentines were fixated on Sunday's World Cup final. What better way to illustrate the sport's vise grip on the populace than online porn metrics?

According to pornographic video sharing site YouPorn.com, the website experienced a precipitous decline in visitors from noon to 3 p.m. Pacific time, the precise timeframe during which the final occurred. By kickoff, 58% fewer Germans than normal were on the site, while Argentina-based YouPorn traffic was down a whopping 67%.

As the game went on, that decline exceeded more than 70% in both countries. Those numbers were even greater than the drops in Spanish traffic during the 2010 final and the drop in Denver traffic during this year's Super Bowl.

An hour after the game ended, though, fans returned to YouPorn — and with a vengeance. By 5 p.m., about 60% more German and Argentine users than average were watching porn. Evidently as beautiful as Mario Götze's game-winning volley was, it didn't totally do it for the German fans.

A similar pattern was visible across Europe, although clearly the non-German audiences had less at stake than Angela Merkel's constituents. Traffic in France, Italy and Spain "only" fell between 30% to 45%.

Perhaps most interesting of all is how little the World Cup seemed to impact American aficionados of adult entertainment. Despite the claims that the United States public fell in love with international soccer during the tournament, the Yanks seemed to have had their eyes on other prizes on Sunday afternoon. After all, YouPorn hardly experienced any decline in stateside visitors during the game.

The same was true the previous day during the third-place game between Brazil and the Netherlands, with more Americans actually on the site during the game than is normal.

Clearly the United States still has a ways to go before it can be considered a soccer-obsessed nation. Or maybe Americans have just perfected the art of watching two screens at once.