by John Isaac Marcos
A Google Trends analysis of the interest surrounding a boxing match and a political debate held a few hours later yielded some interesting results.
Figure 1: Manny Pacquiao V. Bradley (#PacBradIII) interest over time rate from 11:00am (4/10/16) to 8:00am (4/11/16) in the Philippines (Graph courtesy of Google Trends)
It was quite noticeable that the interest of netizens regarding the third boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley got higher as the airing time in the Philippines approached. Between 11:30am-12:30pm (when the match finally aired on national television) the interest rate reached its peak. Although interest slowly went down and occasionally rose a few times as the match went on. By 3:00pm (when the fight had finished and Pacquiao had been declared the winner) the interest rate got a little higher for a very short period of time and randomly went up and down as the day passed.
Figure 2: Manny Pacquiao V. Bradley interest over time from January 2012 to April 2016 Worldwide (Graph courtesy of Google Trends)
Something else of note, the interest of people worldwide regarding this bout noticeably fell compared to the first match of the two boxing fighters on June 9, 2012 or even their second encounter on April 12, 2014.
Figure 3: PiliPinasDebates2016: The Vice Presidential Debate interest over time rate from 12:00nn (4/10/16) to 11:00am (4/11/16) in the Philippines (Graph courtesy of Google Trends)
Later that day, the PiliPinas 2016 Vice Presidential Debates took place at the University of Santo Tomas. Though the event was scheduled to start at 5:00pm, the interest rate on the topic got its first peak before 4:00pm and got higher as the event approached. It reached its highest rate at 5:00pm on the day of the event and randomly increased and decreased over time. It got its highest rate at exactly 2:04am on April 11, 2016.
Figure 4: PiliPinasDebates2016: The Vice Presidential Debate and Manny Pacquiao V. Bradley (#PacBradIII) interest over time rate from 12:00nn (4/10/16) to 11:00am (4/11/16) in the Philippines (Graph courtesy of Google Trends)
Overall, PacBradIII got the eyes of the people on the morning of the fight and before the match had even been completed. Meanwhile, the people who were interested in the Vice Presidential debate later that day had already begun to increase. Based on the figure presented above, people, specifically netizens, were actually more interested in the PiliPinas 2016 Vice Presidential Debate rather than the Pacquiao-Bradley III match.
