New America Media, News Report, Poornima Weerasekara, Posted: Jul 07, 2010

As World Cup frenzy reaches its zenith this week, with almost 80 percent of the world’s population watching every match, the twittersphere has a new obsession: is soccer fever good or bad for global productivity?

An infographic by Mashable.com, based on data gathered by the sales intelligence firm InsideView.com, was among the most retweeted links over the weekend. According to the firm, Britain is expected to loose a whopping $1.5 billion to $2.3 billion in productivity during the month-long tournament that concludes this Sunday.

Meanwhile, researchers at Hohenheim University estimate that the average German will devote 15 minutes of work time daily to watching matches on TV, checking scores on the Internet and taking part in office betting pools.

Even in the relatively unobsessed United States, the loss of productivity is expected to total around $121.7 million. The time difference with South Africa means that all matches are taking place during normal North American work hours. The Associated Press reported that nearly 15 million Americans tuned in to ABC for the U.S. team’s 2-to-1 loss to Ghana in extra time, with another 4.5 million watching on Spanish-language Univision — making it the most-watched men’s World Cup game ever in the country.

The World Cup is the fourth-biggest “top productivity sapper” in the U.S., based on a nonscientific ranking of top sporting events carried out by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a workplace consultancy based in Chicago. The NCAA men’s basketball tournament ranked No. 1, followed by NFL fantasy football pools and the Super Bowl.

Employees taking time off to watch the game, working shorter days or calling in sick are the biggest factors in the drop in productivity, according to InsideView. But buying vuvuzelas, downloading theme songs and watching highlights and reruns of matches on YouTube also add up to office time frittered away on “football stuff.” Indian media recently reported that “Wavin' Flag,” rapper K'Naan's World Cup composition, had become the most downloaded international song in India, with more than 180,000 downloads in just three weeks, or 8,600 per day.

“A lot of people would tweet when a goal is scored or discuss a game on Facebook,” says Marco Levorati, a postdoctoral fellow in telecommunication engineering at the University of South California.

OK, OK. But is the World Cup frenzy really so bad for businesses? Not necessarily, says Anthony Suen, a policy consultant with McKinsey & Company in San Francisco, who insists the competition has provided “a welcome relief to the working grind. The communal atmosphere it builds contributes to better output on collaborative projects.”

Estelle Commet, a summer intern at Microsoft in Seattle, agrees. “Watching the game and discussing it builds a sense of camaraderie,” she says. “It gives you an excuse to talk to a stranger you meet at the water cooler or in the elevator—someone you wouldn’t have spoken to otherwise. These links may help out later on,” she adds.

Meanwhile, many companies around the world have concluded that the best way to deal with football madness is by giving into it. The Associated Press reported that the automotive site Edmunds.com has set up TVs in a large room at the company’s Santa Monica, Calif., headquarters. Staffers are free to watch as long as they get their work done.

Similarly, at Cymtec Systems, a St. Louis-based computer networking company, video of matches is streamed to a large central monitor. “If we don’t provide it to all our employees, everyone is going to stream to their PCs” and overload the computer system, CEO Andrew Rubin said.

German media noted that German insurer Allianz SE set up viewing areas in its Munich offices for Germany’s match with Serbia and anyone could watch it—as long as they punched out first so they weren’t doing so on company time. About 10 percent of the workforce—1,100 people—took the company up on the offer.

“It is really motivating if employees are allowed to watch the World Cup during their work day at the company,” Allianz spokeswoman Vera Werner says. “Some of the managers also came along to watch the game and they saw it as a way to boost their coworkers’ team spirit.”

Or maybe they learned a lesson from the Italian automaker Fiat. Told they couldn’t watch the June 14 Italy vs. Paraguay match on the job, 700 night-shift workers at Fiat’s Termini Imerese plant staged a strike. They simply walked off the job two hours early—conveniently, a half-hour before game time.