Internet sleeps as Star Wars: The Force Awakens. UK traffic figures down nearly 9%
Must admit the internet did seem suspiciously quiet yesterday. Now it seems we may have the reason. Everyone was at the cinema watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens (everyone apart from me that is).
Already the movie is, it seems, a massive global hit. After a record breaking opening night, experts anticipate the film’s first weekend will bring in upwards of $500 million ($200 million stateside, $300 million international) worldwide. That would place it at, or near, the top of the list of the biggest film openings of all time.
However, according to figures produced by Imperva, there was a marked drop in Internet traffic across the UK, France, Germany and Russia as the film made its debut.
In order to observe the trends, Imperva compared the online traffic on their network at the time of the screening with the average amount of traffic during the same time of day, from 02/12/2015 to 15/12/2016.
A full blog post detailing their findings can be found here.
Details on the different internet drops by country are as follows:
| Country | Change in Traffic |
| France | -8.0% |
| Russia | -6.9% |
| UK | -8.7% |
| Germany | -11.7% |
