With England's group games kicking off at 2100 and 2200 BST and Scotland's even later at 2300 and 0200, fans across the UK are honing their strategies to balance late-night football with the morning commute. Some have booked annual leave around potential knockout fixtures; others are hoping to negotiate flexible working. Scotland fan Cameron Rae, who works in a garage, has already booked the Monday after the Haiti game off so he can attend a Tartan Army fan zone at his local town hall, complete with a bar and DJ running until 4am. “I booked the Monday off a while ago,” he said. “I work in a garage and we're open as normal, so I probably wouldn't get away with flexible working.”
Fellow Scotland fan Krys Kujawa, a business analyst, thinks he can survive the late nights without needing days off – just about. “Haiti is early Sunday morning so there's still all of Sunday to recover,” he said. “Morocco is late Friday night so you can just stay up and sleep in on Saturday. Brazil is the difficult one – that's coffee-your-way-through-work territory.” Scotland will have a one-off national Bank Holiday on 15 June to celebrate the national team playing in its first World Cup since 1998 – but it falls before the Brazil match. Kujawa said he would have preferred it after, calling the timing “a bit of a buzzkill” knowing you have to go to work the next morning.
“World Cup fans plan late-night strategies; 1.5 million UK workers expected to call in sick, costing £681m.”
Unions and employment experts have warned businesses to prepare for a spike in so-called “World Cup sickies”. BrightHR, which monitors absences across more than one million UK employees, predicts at least 1.5 million workers will call in sick during the tournament, resulting in more than 2.3 million additional sickness absences. Research by workforce management company UKG suggests the World Cup could cost UK employers around £681m in lost productivity.
One company hoping to avoid any sickies is Birmingham-based digital agency Pull the Pin, where founder Sam Hufton has expanded the firm's flexible working policy. “As a keen football fan, I've reminded everyone that if they want to watch a game and start a bit later, that's fine, all we ask is that they're transparent about it,” he said.