When major football tournaments like the UEFA European Championship kick off, England celebrates in the only way they know how, by enthusiastic drinking.
However, many matches that England are set to play precede a working day, so what is the effect on UK businesses if footy fans are turning up to their day jobs hungover?
The finance experts at NetVoucherCodes have crunched the numbers and calculated the true cost of Euros hangovers on UK businesses.
The results revealed that hangovers from footy fans watching the Euros are set to cost UK businesses over £409 million for a single day.
The calculations are below:
NetVoucherCodes calculated the daily productivity loss of an average worker by first analysing the average employee’s wage per day in the UK, which is £139.29 based on recent ONS figures. A worker’s productivity is said to decrease by 24.9% on a hangover according to the National Library of Medicine. This means hungover workers are potentially wasting £34.68 of business money each day.
According to GlobalData, 35.4 million Brits are expected to tune in to watch the Euros. However, not all of them will be working the next day or are planning on drinking. Therefore, the study took just 62.9% of this number who are working-aged Brits leaving us with 22 million. The number was then reduced further by the number of those employed at 74.5% leaving us with 16,588,617 and further reduced based on the number of UK adults that drink at least once a week (71.2%). This concluded that 11,811,095 million Brits watching the Euros could be hungover to work the next day.
The study then multiplied the productivity loss per drinking viewer (£34.68) by the number of drinking viewers (11,811,095). This revealed that hangovers from the Euros could cost UK businesses £409,608,774 million for each match that England plays.
Throughout the whole Euros tournament, England played six times on days before a working day. This meant that businesses could have lost of a total of £2,457,652,644 (£2 billion) over the entire tournament due to England fan’s lost productivity.
In terms of working hours, with the assumption that the average UK employee works for 8 hours a day, on a hangover they would lose 119.5 minutes of productivity. If we multiply this by the number of drinking Brits watching the Euros, UK businesses could lose 23,527,701 working hours in total.
Rebecca Bebbington, Finance expert at NetVoucherCodes comments on the findings:
“The UK is very passionate about football, but it’s also very passionate about drinking. It’s no doubt that many football fans will celebrate the Euro tournament by getting drunk, whether watching from home or going to their pub with their mates.
“However, drinkers should be cautious about if the match they’re watching is before a working day. It’s very easy to take things too far and find yourself hungover the next day which can severely reduce your productivity depending on the amount you’ve had to drink and how you handle your alcohol. While this also has a huge cost to businesses, it can be risky for the individual to turn up to work with alcohol in their system.
“Always make sure to watch how much you’re drinking. Drink plenty of water throughout the night and be mindful of your job the next day.”
Steve Barnes, Founder of NetVoucherCodes is giving his staff a late-start in the morning after the England game to mitigate any loss of productivity:
“You have to realise that this is a once in a generation event and everyone is really excited about it. Our team probably wouldn’t be very productive for the first couple of hours anyway. Allowing them to have an extra hour or so in bed is a nice gesture that I’m sure will be repaid in kind by them catching up with their work anyway. It’s good for morale and overall team spirit.”
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