Is there anyone on the planet who does not know that Spain won the 2010 World Cup last week? My Spanish friends (and every news agency in the world) shared images of the celebrations permeating each calle and plaza in Spain last Sunday. The emotional rush was contagious, seeing the Spaniards celebrate their team with unbridled enthusiasm and happiness.

I wonder how many of them made it to work the following Monday?

For the Americans reading this, you may recall the sports-related productivity statistics that become media bits each year around the time of The Super Bowl and March Madness. "Productivity goes down", the reports often lament. About 6 years ago, Challenger, Gray, and Christmas offered an estimate suggesting that The Super Bowl cost employers over $800 million in lost wages (roughly calculated as $2.59 for every ten minutes an employee is talking about the game instead of working, multiplied by the total number of employees who likely watched the game).

In late-June, in the midst of World Cup mania, I attended a conference in Brazil, a soccer-loving country. There I learned (the hard way) that many Brazilian small businesses had a different, perhaps more realistic, approach to sporting events and productivity. Hint: they close.

On the day of the Brazil v. Chile match, my French friend Jean-Luc and I wanted to do some sightseeing in a quaint and artsy area of Rio de Janeiro. Our kind and very patient Portuguese-speaking taxi driver tried to warn us that there would not likely be anything open due to the match at 3:30 PM. It was 10:00 AM. We assumed something was getting lost in translation in the English-French-Italian-Spanish-gesturing we were using to communicate with him. He shrugged, smiled, and drove us where we wanted to go.

Thankfully, our kind and very patient taxi driver waited for us – meter off -- as we discovered for ourselves that he was correct. He was too classy to say “I told you so” and drove us to a place that was open – the section of Rio with stores selling “team Brazil” soccer goods. We bought T-shirts.

After returning to the hotel, in the midst of the excitement, the smiles, and the spring in everyone's step the next day (Brazil won), I couldn’t help but wonder whether there might be another side to this sports-related productivity equation – a productivity gain (yes, gain) after a major sporting event. Consider these:

1. The emotional buzz and the rush of having had an exciting experience that can spill over positively to work. (Of course, this might be mitigated by whether your team wins.)
2. The enhanced creativity that can occur from enhanced mindfulness (the time spent totally in the moment) created from both the event and the celebration that follows.
3. The increased personal connections among colleagues who bond around a common interest.

While tougher to quantify, these potential productivity-increasing factors may have a long-lasting positive influence. The Brazilian small business owners might have the right idea in closing their businesses during the World Cup matches.

What do you think - are these major sporting events hurting or helping our productivity?

Paula