The World Cup’s Untold Economic Effects
The World Cup.
The most watched sporting event in the world. The final game alone receives 600 million views, over twice as much as the Olympic opening ceremony the second most viewed sporting event. The average number of views per match, 95 million, is larger than the World Series.
Sporting events of such magnitude are well known for bringing massive amounts of money into a country, boosting the local economies and creating long-term beneficial international relationships. In short the World Cup acts as a booster shot to the economy pumping massive amounts of currency into the host country.
But like all things there are good and bad. Productivity world-wide drops as people try to watch the World Cup games live at work. People take vacation days, go home early, and sometimes even call in sick to watch the games. In the US, a country that can’t be considered soccer crazed compared to some, alone an estimated 121.7 million is lost in productivity every world cup. In a country like England that lives, eats and breathes soccer the World Cup will cost their economy an estimated 7.36 billion. That’s 0.3% of their GDP that just disappears because people want to watch soccer.
0.3% is just a reference number however, because the overall effect of the World Cup probably increases a country’s GDP when all things are considered (increased sales of alcohol, food, plane tickets, jerseys etc). But the unfortunate part is where the 0.3% comes from. It comes from all businesses including the businesses that won’t experience increased sales because of the World Cup.
But forget about your employees watching at work, who cares if they watch 5 minutes of highlights to lighten their day. Employee happiness is critical to a successful business right? Well in England it’s estimated that workers will check the games for an hour every day. That’s a significant amount of time, and may vary if the team they’re supporting happens to be playing. On top of that 26% of the people surveyed indicated they would be taking time off to watch the World Cup. 17% planned on working shorter days, and 3% planned to call in sick to watch the games.
So what can you do? Well if people are going to take off time or call in sick
There’s nothing you can do short of firing.
Thankfully there are some things you can do to prevent your employees from watching the games during work.
- Watching over their shoulder
- Make them promise to not watch the games
- Use BrowseControl or BrowseReporter
Let’s be fair here, only one of those options is viable (if you couldn’t tell). BrowseControl allows you to restrict their internet usage, and with the Category Filtering feature it just takes the blocking of one category. It’s that simple.
BrowseReporter is a little more passive, it allows you to monitor and generate reports on your employee’s internet usage. This allows you to find out which employees kept their promise. Either way you will be able to either directly prevent, or discipline your employees when they try to watch the World Cup.
Now you’re probably thinking, well I’m an excellent manager I would never deny the World Cup to my employees when they’re on lunch. Well that’s why I chose to mention BrowseControl, because it has a scheduler that will allow you to enable the internet for their lunches and breaks. That way you can impress your boss by keeping productivity high, and impress your employees by allowing them to watch the World Cup on lunch.
BrowseControl and BrowseReporter could make you the real winner this World Cup, try it now for free.
