FIFA 2014 World Cup Brazil: Dating Apps Tinder, Grindr Explode in Popularity
For soccer fanatics, nothing gets them more passionate than every four years when the World Cup takes place. For 2014 World Cup fans in Brazil, apparently that passion is spreading beyond the stadiums, where location-based dating apps like Tinder and Grindr have erupted in popularity since the start of the world's biggest sporting event.
Quartz's Devjyot Ghoshal talked to dating apps Tinder and Grindr about the impact the FIFA 2014 World Cup has had on downloads and usage in Brazil since the start of the tournament, and the results were quite stark, though perhaps unsurprising.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, both apps are location-based smartphone dating apps for singles who want to connect in real life. Tinder matches two users based on a number of factors, including location, mutual friends, common interests, and anonymous swipe-right "likes" by each user. If both users "like" each other, then Tinder introduces the two users and opens a chat -- they take it from there. Grindr works in a similar way, without the anonymous matchmaking process, but is specialized for gay, bi, and bi-curious men.
Both apps have seen their usage number in Brazil spike in the last few weeks. Compared to early June, Tinder has seen a 50 percent increase in downloads in Brazil. For Grindr, the usage rate -- the number of times someone has opened the app -- has spiked by 31 percent. Tinder's usage rate is up by 50 percent, and the time people spent on the app is up by almost as much.
"The average Tinder user spends more than one hour a day on Tinder, approximately 77 minutes, and that number is up nearly 50 percent in Brazil since the start of the World Cup," said Tinder's Rosette Pambikian to Quartz. For Grindr, with over 200,000 active monthly users in Brazil, which is the sixth-largest market in the world for Grindr, time spent on the app is up by 26 percent.
A couple of factors -- both obvious and not -- go into the skyrocketing statistics for technologically-enabled romance at the FIFA 2014 World Cup. For the obvious, with an estimated 600,000 tourists from 186 countries visiting Brazil's warm sandy beaches for the event, and more than 3.1 million Brazilians traveling around the country for the month-long soccer celebration, it's hardly surprising that many locals and foreigners alike are looking to meet up with a fleeting World Cup tryst.
But it's also worth to note that, in the list of emerging Latin American technology markets with the most smartphone penetration, Brazil is second only to Mexico's 28 percent, with 23 percent of its population using mobile devices. There are approximately 82 million Brazilians using the mobile Internet as of 2013, with that number only expected to climb in the coming years.
And according to Quartz, more Brazilians were already using Tinder, which is available in Portuguese, than any other country, besides the U.S. and U.K. All of these factors conspire to make the 2014 World Cup in Brazil a gigantic world arena for not only soccer, but for making whoopee.