The Milan-Cortina Olympics are huge on Pornhub too Winter sports have never been so hot

It is well known that variety and opportunity ignite the imagination. And that of Italians seems particularly ignited by the Milan Cortina Winter Olympic Games. In recent days, in fact, Pornhub has published the report Winter Olympics Italian Insights, describing a whole series of interesting behaviors that have involved the consumption habits (let's call them that) of adult material in our country during the first days of the Games.

Two main findings emerge from the data. The first is that a media event of this magnitude, talked about in a thousand ways and through a thousand different channels, has managed to creep not only into consciousness but also into the collective fantasy of the country, leading to frankly insane increases in themed searches that we will return to very shortly. The second finding, which we will also see shortly and which concerns the variation in traffic flow on the site corresponding to the key events of the Games, is that the interruption caused by the ceremony only increased users' appetite.

But let's proceed in order.

Tell me what porn you watch and I'll tell you who you are

Throughout the entire month of February, here in Italy the behavior of Pornhub users and especially their curiosities have been to say the least fascinating. Traffic patterns and searches have clearly shown how the Games have tickled the Italian public's imagination, leading them into a real marathon (forgive the pun) of Olympic-themed searches.

Perhaps not surprisingly, queries for "winter olympics" have skyrocketed by 5452%, a testament to widespread enthusiasm for the event. More concrete in their curiosity, the second largest slice of the public searched for "olympic village", a keyword that saw related searches rise by 4361%, while searches for "gold medal" (this one leaves us puzzled) grew by 3803%.

Going down the ranking of the most searched terms, the funniest details emerge: searches for "speed skating" on Pornhub grew by 2442%, although we discourage any activity on skates that is not strictly skating; while just below, "olympic gymnast" and "blonde fitness" each rose by over 2200%, a more down-to-earth "nude olympics" grew by 2077%. The fetishists of technical clothing were not missing, with searches for "gym leggings" rising by 1771% and for "velor tracksuit" by 1656%. Nostalgia for that period of the 2000s is real, in short, but less innocent than we thought.

Attention and multitasking

When newspapers wrote that the opening ceremony of the Games monopolized attention, it's because it monopolized it. Pornhub indeed recorded a generalized 8% drop in traffic worldwide at the start of the ceremony at San Siro, but in Italy at the launch of the ceremony the crash was immediate and 12%. A social media specialist would tell you that engagement was higher in the host country: we like to call it patriotism.

One hour after the start of the ceremony, the reduction in traffic in Italy eased to 3%, returning in line with the world average (the dopamine peak dissolves quickly) and at 10:00 PM it dropped further to 1% in Italy while in the rest of the world it rose by 1%. In practice, Italians, after one hour, were already back to their pleasant activities while elsewhere a small boom began because the ceremony was ending or had lost interest.

Once the ceremony was over, around midnight, Italians made up for all the lost time and in our country there was a rebound in site visits of 7%, which in the rest of the world was 9%, showing that for many viewers this “interruption” had perhaps weighed heavily.

Closer, more involved

A separate case is that of the cities at the center of the ceremonies, Milan and Cortina, where the impact of the event on Pornhub traffic was even more intense. In Cortina, traffic dropped by 18% at the start of the ceremony, while in Milan by 13%. One hour after the start of the ceremony both locations saw a 5% drop, but at 10:00 PM if in Cortina the drop was holding at a moderate 9%, the Milanese had already fallen into temptation and the drop had reduced to a tiny 3%. The recovery, however, did not take long. By midnight, traffic on Pornhub from Cortina had risen by 9%, and in Milan it had risen by 11% already at 1:00 AM compared to its usual levels.

Beyond the ceremony, the broader traffic patterns in Milan and Cortina were quite different from the rest of the Italian average, with peaks in attendance and searches that far exceeded national averages. For example, in the afternoon before the event at 2:00 PM, traffic in Milan flew 814% above the national baseline, perhaps fueled by pre-ceremony anticipation synchronized with lunch break. After the ceremony, however, Cortina experienced a post-event traffic boost 527% higher than the rest of Italy at the same time. In fact, citizens had said they were very stressed by the Olympic preparations and this tension in one way or another had to be relieved.

Takeaways

- The 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics greatly ignited Italians' collective imagination on Pornhub, with Olympic-themed searches exploding impressively, such as +5452% for "winter olympics", +4361% for "olympic village" and +2077% for "nude olympics", along with peaks in terms related to fitness and technical clothing.

- The opening ceremony caused an immediate and marked drop in Pornhub traffic (–12% in Italy versus –8% globally), but the effect was short-lived: already after one hour the drop reduced to 3% and Italians quickly returned to their habits, with a positive rebound of 7% at midnight.

- In the host cities the impact was even stronger: Cortina recorded an initial drop of 18% and Milan 13%, with differentiated recoveries (Cortina +9% at midnight and Milan +11% at 1:00 AM compared to usual levels), highlighting greater involvement in the epicenter areas.

- Beyond the pause during the ceremony, the Olympic cities showed anomalous peaks compared to the rest of Italy (+814% in Milan in the pre-event afternoon and +527% in Cortina post-ceremony), suggesting that the stress and excitement tied to the preparations amplified the appetite for adult content as a form of release.