Football (“soccer” in the US) is considered the most popular sport in the world, with around
Here is the full list, which provides more detail than the map above, showing each country and the percentage decrease (or increase) in traffic as compared to the previous week at the time those countries’ national team games were occurring.
Country
Increase/ decrease traffic
Game day/hour (UTC)
Opponent
Netherlands
-18%
June 16, 13:00
Poland
Turkey
-16%
June 18, 16:00
Georgia
Belgium
-15%
June 17, 16:00
Slovakia
Croatia
-14%
June 15, 16:00
Spain
Slovakia
-14%
June 17, 16:00
Belgium
Serbia
-13%
June 16, 19:00
England
Germany
-12%
June 14, 19:00
Scotland
Denmark
-10%
June 16, 16:00
Slovenia
Slovenia
-10%
June 16, 16:00
Denmark
Switzerland
-9%
June 15, 13:00
Hungary
England
-8%
June 16, 19:00
Serbia
Georgia
-8%
June 18, 16:00
Turkey
Austria
-7%
June 17, 19:00
France
Hungary
-7%
June 15, 13:00
Switzerland
Spain
-7%
June 15, 16:00
Croatia
France
-6%
June 17, 19:00
Austria
Scotland
-6%
June 14, 19:00
Germany
Portugal
-6%
June 18, 19:00
Czechia
Italy
-3%
June 15, 19:00
Albania
Czechia
-3%
June 18, 19:00
Portugal
Ukraine
9%
June 17, 13:00
Romania
Poland
12%
June 16, 13:00
Netherlands
Romania
16%
June 17, 13:00
Ukraine
Albania
25%
June 15, 19:00
Italy
Albania, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, and Slovenia were the only countries with an increase in HTTP requests during games. England (-8%) and Scotland (-6%) both have similar drops in requests during their national team games.
We’ve also noticed looking at our country-related HTTP data around games that social media services usually go up during half-time and before and after these national team games. As expected, traffic to websites in categories like AI chatbots, ecommerce (though some see increases during halftime), productivity tools, and business and financial services tends to decrease during Euro 2024 games.
First day of competition: Germany-Scotland
Another important perspective is focused on the first day of competition. On June 14, 2024, Euro 2024 kicked off in Germany. How was Internet traffic impacted in the country?
When the ceremony started around 18:45 UTC (20:45 local time), by as much as 11%, deepening to a 12% drop from the previous week when the first game between Germany and Scotland began at 19:00 UTC (21:00 local time). Traffic briefly recovered during halftime to only 4% below the previous week’s levels, but fell again to 11% below the prior week during the second half. At 00:00 UTC (02:00 local time), requests dropped as much as 19% from the previous week, in a night of celebration for German fans.
The second round of games in the Euro 2024 group phase is already underway. We’re keeping an eye on country-related trends after games on X.
An attacks perspective
During the UEFA Euro 2024 event in Germany, we’ve observed several attacks in the country. These included application layer DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks targeting various websites, such as a translation tool, a data protection tool, a search engine, and a local government website. The most significant DDoS attack occurred on June 15, 2024, the day after the competition started, targeting the translation tool. This attack reached 105 million requests per hour at 23:00 UTC and lasted about two hours with two distinct spikes.
Looking more closely at the attack on the translation tool, it peaked at 1.74 million requests per second (rps) at 23:40 UTC, following an initial spike of 147,000 rps at 21:04 UTC.
Conclusion
Football is incredibly important to Europeans, enough to cause nationwide Internet traffic to drop when fans are rooting for their national teams in a UEFA Euro 2024 game broadcast on national TV.
Despite the popularity of online services like live score apps, sports news sites that track every minute of each game, and betting services enhanced with new visual tools and stats, national team football (or soccer) still significantly diverts attention away from the Internet.
We will continue to monitor UEFA Euro 2024 Internet trends. Based on the results of a poll we conducted on X, we plan to publish daily updates about games and their impact on countries whose national teams are playing that day. Follow us there.
Source:: CloudFlare