Depending where you are in the US, up to 50% of World Cup matches kick off during the workday

Employers have spent years fighting return-to-office battles, wondering who’s actually present in camera-off calls, and trying to squeeze more productivity out of meeting-packed calendars. This summer, they may be tackling a different problem with people showing up as the world’s biggest sporting event kicks off, perhaps bringing with it a wave of suspiciously timed sickness bugs.

Injury time?

This week, Business Insider reported that workers are already looking for ways to bend their workdays around the World Cup once the tournament begins on June 11, citing a UKG survey of 8,000 workers across eight countries. One-third of respondents said they were likely to take at least one day off for the World Cup, while a quarter expected to miss part of a workday. The same 25% share said they’d “push the limits” of what their managers would tolerate.

The workplace disruption could be especially visible in North America, where the tournament will be hosted in 16 cities across the US, Canada, and Mexico. Indeed, of the 104 matches played over a record 39 days, roughly one in three will kick off from 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. ET on a weekday — and the farther west you go, the bigger the workday overlap gets.

FIFA said that the finalized kickoff schedule was designed in part to reach “the widest possible global audience.” Unfortunately for American employers, that means plenty of games will land very much within the working day, providing chances for workers to tune out, duck out, or call in sick.

According to data from global HR firm Deel, cited by BI, German workers used significantly more sick time when Germany hosted the UEFA European Championship in 2024 than they did the following year, in a trend that wasn’t observed across non-host countries.

Whether that repeats in North America remains to be seen, but an array of data suggests employers may have cause for concern. A March survey of 1,000 US adults by FinanceBuzz found that roughly a quarter planned to watch World Cup matches when on the clock, which the firm estimated could translate to as much as $4.5 billion in lost productivity for US businesses.