This is awesome, and quite telling. This graph comes from a number of sources including this one. The blue trace shows the rate of water consumption in the city of Edmonton during the Olympic Hockey gold medal game. The previous day is included in the green trace.

During each period of play you can see the rate of water consumption drop drastically as fans stay glued to their televisions so they don’t miss a second of action. The resolution is good enough that you can also see less enthusiastic fans make the sacrifice at the ad breaks during each period.

Then at the end of each period, the entire city seems to get up and use the bathroom. The water consumption shoots right up very quickly and is mostly from flushing toilets. I’m told that at the bars in Vancouver there were lineups. For the mens washroom. The women were like, “Haha, now you know how we feel.”

This is interesting to me because real time data collection and analysis is what we do at OSIsoft, where I work. Real-time monitoring on major pipelines lets utility companies spot blockages, leaks or breaks very quickly so water can be re-routed and issues fixed. I’m not sure if EPCOR is a customer of ours, but I know we do have a number of utilities in Alberta and all over Canada.

But yeah, pretty much all of Edmonton was glued to the TV and “held on” until the end of the periods crosslegged.

I wonder if it is the same during the AFL grand final. Melbourne cup might not be too short to get meaningful data from.