Which event is more widely talked about: the Super Bowl, the biggest game in American football, The UEFA Champions League, Europe’s top club football competition, or the World Cup, a football tradition that encompasses the whole globe?

This Google Trend map, from 2004-present, shows that while the Champions League (red) is searched more consistently throughout each year, in February every year the super bowl (blue) spikes dramatically. But both these hallowed events pale in comparison to the World Cup (yellow), which dominates search browsers for the month it takes place, every four years in the summer.

The Champions League has a low, steady pace for searches, and it actually has grossed more searches than the Super Bowl over the past 13 years.  Each February, there is a sharp spike in searches for the Super Bowl, but the hype quickly dissipates once the event is over. The same can be said about the World Cup; every four years there is a massive spike, followed by a sharp decline following the event’s conclusion.

The world map shows that in Eastern Europe and Russia, the Champions league is the most searched topic. However, basically the rest of the world searches mainly for the World Cup. The United States is the only outlier, as it most commonly searches for the Super Bowl.

Photo courtesy of Brad.K – Flickr