The Financial Times has been featuring various articles and comments on the effect of football on office productivity such as this one:

“Sir, You quote the Centre for Economics and Business Research as saying that the impact of the World Cup on UK productivity should be limited, since most of England’s matches will not be in working hours (“Analysts have a field day with ‘soccernomic’ predictions”, June 1).

However, we calculate that lost productivity could still top £1bn in value. We assumed 25 per cent of workers would follow the World Cup avidly, and that each would lose on average (say) 7 hours productivity through absenteeism, distraction, chit-chat and so on over the World Cup. At an average output value of £24 an hour (UK gross domestic product of £5bn per working day, divided by 30m workers, divided by (say) 7 hours per working day) this comes to £1.26bn.

Maurice Fitzpatrick,

Senior Tax Manager,

Grant Thornton UK”