The news cycle has gotten shorter in the 2020s, in large part thanks to social media and the instantaneous spread of information. Being inundated with content and new stories, it is hard to keep track of everything that’s happened. Sometimes recent events feel like they occurred ages ago—for instance, the infamous Luka Dončić trade happened within the past year!
Axios charted this fast-paced news cycle with a brilliant data visualization last week, and we were inspired to create a sports version. The graphic below shows the Google search volume of 38 different sports or sports-adjacent topics over the course of the 2025 calendar.
The first conclusion that jumps out is how quickly stories rise and fall. Practically nobody searched for “torpedo bat” before the week of March 30, when the new bat shape exploded onto the radar of baseball fans during MLB’s opening weekend. By April 6, nobody cared anymore—more than 50% of all 2025 search traffic for the term came within that one seven-day stretch.
Many people had a single rapid spike before disappearing, including Chauncey Billups, the former Portland Trail Blazers coach arrested for alleged illegal gambling in October, and new NBA owners William Chisholm and Mark Walter, as Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers fans wanted to learn about who had just purchased their favorite franchise.
Other topics have graphs with more interesting shapes. Former Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison had two spikes—one when he traded Doncic in February and another when he got fired in November. Same for Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce—his Super Bowl appearance in February got him slightly more attention than his engagement to Taylor Swift in August.
The one row in the chart with a steady search volume throughout the year is “Dildos.” The sports connection was a series of incidents in late July when sex toys were thrown onto the court during WNBA games, prompting discussions about player safety, misogyny and betting integrity. These events garnered enough attention to more than double the overall normal search traffic for the term during the first week of August.