INTERNET - Google Trends reported a 573830583% increase in “What Is The Supporters Shield” searches relative to last year as the search engine was inundated with this question over the past 48 hours.

Reports indicate that “What Is The Supporters Shield” searches seemed to peak on October 18th, 2020 in one massive push mostly supported by the subregion of Ontario, Canada.

“It’s interesting to note that the related topics were Supporters’ Shield - Award and MLS - Soccer League,” stated director of Analytics Geoff Rowsten. “We saw a massive spike from Tim Horton’s parking lots across the Ontario province.”

THIS DATA IS INTERESTING, BUT WE NEED MORE

Additionally, researchers say that when the search was less restricted, that people searching for just Supporters Shield had some very informative queries.

“What we see here is a strong break out of Toronto FC fans figuring out what the supporters’ shield is and connecting the announcement to the fact that they likely will not be receiving it,” stated Google researcher James Wilson. “If we look at the data by the United States we see the interest over time, and it becomes clear that we are looking at the passion of the Supporters Shield in evidence specifically in Canada.”

Sources with the Internet giant say that they scaled up their operations in the Toronto area during the push but things are back to normal.

“We see that we are more or less back to the a flat line again, and we anticipate this to be the case until next year or the year after or the next time a global pandemic forces a partial restructuring of the entire league.”

The Nutmeg News will have more on this as we send our reporter out to photograph the Supporters Shield parade for this season.