The World Cup Has Exposed an Awkward Truth About Work

Every major sports tournament brings with it a familiar debate and the FIFA World Cup, which concluded Sunday with Spain’s victory, was no different.

The question: Should employers let staff leave early for kick-off? 

Is it reasonable to get into work late, the morning after a late-night match? Should offices screen games? Should managers simply accept that productivity will dip while the nation collectively wills England, or Argentina, or Spain, or France to glory?

Yes, yes, yes to all of it. One estimate from before this year’s tournament kicked off put the cost of a soccer-related productivity dip at $4.5 billion for businesses in the U.S. alone.

Indeed, when it comes to sporting events, employers are expected to be flexible. They’re expected to recognize that major sporting events boost morale, create shared moments of connection and, perhaps most importantly, acknowledge that employees have lives beyond their desks. It is, we're told, good management. 

And of course it is. Indeed, it’s a wonderful thing. But there is a problem — It’s not that workplaces become more accommodating during the World Cup; it's that the tournament exposes just how selectively and enthusiastically workplace managers extend that flexibility.

Consider a different conversation: An employee needs to leave unexpectedly because an elderly parent has fallen. Another asks to work from home because childcare arrangements have collapsed. Someone requests a few hours off to support a partner through a medical appointment. These are often met with a very different set of questions. Can someone else cover? Is it really necessary? Could you rearrange it? How much notice can you give next time?

The requests are treated as inconvenient exceptions requiring explanation rather than ordinary realities of modern life. Yet ask to leave at 3 p.m. because your team is playing, and suddenly flexibility becomes a symbol of enlightened leadership.

Of course, football isn't trivial. Moreover, there is something valuable about recognizing that work isn't the only thing that defines us. But that is precisely the point. The World Cup demonstrates that workplaces are perfectly capable of reorganizing priorities when bosses collectively agree something matters. Schedules can be adjusted. Meetings can move. Deadlines can shift. Hybrid work suddenly becomes remarkably straightforward. The logistical barriers that often seem immovable turn out to be surprisingly flexible.

The question, then, isn't whether flexibility is possible. It's why we ration it.

For years, debates about flexible working have centred on productivity. Employers have worried that accommodating individual circumstances creates inefficiency or unfairness. Yet every World Cup undermines that argument. Organizations across the country find pragmatic ways to adapt because they judge the benefits to outweigh the disruption.

What changes isn't the operational reality. It's the perceived legitimacy of the reason.

Perhaps this reflects something deeper about how we think about work. Shared cultural moments feel celebratory and uncomplicated. Caring responsibilities — which, I’ll admit, are far less exciting, but also more private and painful— remain strangely invisible.

But most people will, at some point, care for a child, support an aging parent, accompany someone they love through illness or deal with an unexpected family crisis. These aren't unusual interruptions to working life. They are working life. So just imagine if we approached care with the same instinctive — and widely expected — generosity that we reserve for kick-off.

Every four years, employers prove that flexibility isn't constrained by logistics. It's constrained by what we choose to value. For me, that's the real lesson of the World Cup. Not that football deserves flexibility — but that care — and all the other surprises that pop up in our daily lives — deserves it too.