The 2018 Winter Olympics opened February 9th in Pyeongchang, South Korea. As people all over the world tuned in to watch their favorite winter sports, the excitement soon flowed over to Pornhub where searches containing “Olympic” and “Olympics” grew by up to 561% compared to average levels.
Not only were Olympic athletes on people’s minds, but also increased interest in the hosting nation of South Korea. Searches containing either “Korea” or “Korean” (nsfw) grew by 38% above normal levels on February 9th and have continued to remain high.
Some interesting Olympic related searches that had big gains included “Nude Olympics” by +1801%, and a noticeable “Bulge” increase of +239%. “Figure Skating” was the Winter Olympic sport with the biggest search gain (+622%) followed by “Skiing” (+424%) and “Hockey” (+245%).
Korea/Korean (+112%) topped the list of gaining nationality searches, thanks to being the hosting nationality and also due to the news coverage of the North and South Korean teams coming together for the games. Worldwide searches for Russia/Russian grew by 78% and China/Chinese by 67%.
While porn websites are officially banned in Korea, we do still have regular visitors from the Gangwon-do region. The influx of Olympic athletes, press and spectators caused Pornhub’s traffic to rise as early as February 1st. On February 7th traffic was 70% above normal levels. The increase was slightly lower on February 9th, perhaps as all hands were on deck for the opening ceremony preparations. The peak traffic increase of 85% happened on February 12th.
Our statisticians next looked at the demographic makeup of visitors from the Gangwon-do region. Using our analytics tool, we compared visitors from February 7-14 to the the typical visitors from the same region, and found that the proportion of female visitors grew by 25%. Visitors between the ages of 18-24 shrunk by -6% but the group aged 35 to 54 grew by more than 25%. The largest increase of +80% came from visitors over the age of 65.
To see what type of porn the Olympic athletes and spectators were most interested in watching, our statisticians compared the popularity of categories in Gangwon-do from February 7-14 to that of typical visitors from the region. We found that the “Threesome” category increased the most by 35% in popularity, perhaps indicating that some athletes were interested in teaming up with new partners during their time in Pyeongchang. The popularity of the “Lesbian” category increase by 34% “Anal” by 24%.
Interested in more Olympic sized stats? Be sure to check out our comprehensive coverage of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.