The 2024 Summer Olympics, or Paris 2024, is set from July 26 to August 11 in France. The opening ceremony, scheduled for Friday, July 26 at 17:30, will take place for the first time not in a stadium but in the open space of the Jardins du Trocadéro by the Seine River in Paris. Similar to its 2024 elections coverage, Cloudflare has monitored Internet insights ahead of the event.
From our 1.1.1.1 resolver, DNS trends show heightened interest in the Olympics, especially from France. 24% of DNS requests for official Olympic-related websites came from the host country, followed by the United Kingdom and the United States, with 20% and 17% respectively.
On April 10, 2024, DNS traffic spikes were observed not just in France but also notably in Germany, Russia, and the US, among others.
The most obvious spike occurred on February 8, 2024, marking the start of the first phase of ticket sales for 2024, called the “Paris 2024 official ticketing website surprise releases.”
From a cybersecurity perspective, as major events often attract phishing and spam. From January 2024 up to late-July, Cloudflare’s Cloud Email Security service processed well over half a million emails containing “Olympics” or “Paris 2024” in the subject. The week of July 15 saw the highest number of such emails, marking a 694% increase compared to the busiest week in January.
Regarding unwanted messages, spam accounted for 1.5% of all emails with “Olympics” or “Paris 2024” in the subject, while malicious emails made up 0.2%.
Here’s the breakdown of countries responsible for at least 1% of 1.1.1.1. traffic for Olympic sites (percentages rounded):
France: 24%
United Kingdom: 20%
United States: 17%
Brazil: 5%
Germany: 4%
Russia: 3%
Australia: 2%
Japan: 2%
India: 2%
Spain: 1%
Ireland: 1%
Canada: 1%
South Africa: 1%
Netherlands: 1%
Italy: 1%