The 2024 UEFA European Football Championship, better known as Euro 2024, is currently underway in Germany. One of the tournament’s many sponsors is Chinese automobile company BYD. However, some curious fans looking for the BYD website are being inadvertently redirected to an X-rated site instead.
Why is this happening?
The Euro 2024 tournament is taking place in Germany. Now, some Germans curious about BYD used the German domain extension – “dot de” – instead of the standard “dot com” while looking up the website.
Unfortunately, “BYD dot de” redirects to the website of a company selling adult toys. An X user explained it well in his viral post by writing: “Huge blunder for BYD at the Euros - a Chinese car manufacturer , and one of the sponsors of the Euros in Germany, and so naturally Germans have searched for it via the german extension ‘byd .de’ which leads you to another site….”
“We are not the sponsors”
The X-rated website has apparently seen a surge in traffic since the beginning of Euro 2024. So much so that it has put up a notice for anyone who may have accidentally found his way there.
{{/usCountry}}The X-rated website has apparently seen a surge in traffic since the beginning of Euro 2024. So much so that it has put up a notice for anyone who may have accidentally found his way there.
{{/usCountry}}The notice on the website reads: “Important note on the Euro 2024. Due to the numerous enquiries: We are NOT sponsors of the EURO 24 Football Championship. If you are looking for a Chinese vehicle manufacturer you can find it at www.byd.com.”
Publicity stunt?
The jury is still out on whether or not this is a publicity stunt.
In the comments section of the social media post, people wondered whether the notice on the adult toys website is genuine or just a genius move to gain publicity.
“Or… is it genius? I have seen this story 47 times in 2 days. That’s 47 times more than I was aware of their sponsorship,” wrote one X user.
“Idk, seems like pretty funny and unintentional viral marketing,” another countered.
“The cynic in me suspects this was done intentionally by a prankster. & it's quite funny, fair play. BYD should have never let it happen, though,” a third person commented.