Hm, that sounds like a plausible theory. I've never investigated beyond looking at the locations via google analytics and they always seemed to be European visitors (Spain was the majority) which I assumed meant the traffic was legitimate because the football matches of interest match up. Next time it happens I'll look up some of the IP addresses used and see if they match any known spammers, although I suspect if they are doing some sort of click fraud they'd be using bot nets?
