So the rugby World Cup is expected to eat into employee productivity costing British businesses more than £461m, according to email and Web content security firm Marshal?
What a load of tripe! TV rights have gone through the roof for the 2007 tournament. ITV, alone, has paid £30m for the rights to broadcast the event — three times more than it paid for the 2003 tournament.
So with all that invested cash and corporate reputations on the line, sponsors and organisers have gone to great lengths to ensure that planning and fixtures draw a maximum audience.
The event will draw a global television audience of 4bn people for the 48 matches. It is predicted by the International Rugby Board.
to be the third-biggest sports event after the soccer World Cup and the Olympics.
So with that in mind, most games have been scheduled for evening viewing times (GMT), unless on the weekend. And I can hardly believe employed Britons will spend half an hour of each working day watching coverage of matches or browsing the web for updates on scores, especially when some of the games involve Georgia v Namibia and Romania v Portugal (No offence to any Romanians and full respect to Nadia Comaneci).
I could be wrong of course, however. A recent poll conducted by Reed Business found that more than half of 1,346 respondents do not even intend on watching the Rugby World Cup, never mind scanning for stats and pictures of their favourite teams and players during working hours.
Pie in the sky for what will be calculated next? Time lost to employees looking out of the office window on a summer day?
