Slackers, stores and sightseers score with World Cup

Purveyors of TVs, tourism and takeaway meals are banking on a World Cup bonanza while bosses strive to avert a four-yearly wave of worker absenteeism.

As football's flagship tournament kicks off in Russia, businesses around the world are looking either to cash in or find creative ways to stop productivity plummeting.

Fan passion runs high well beyond the game's traditional power centres of Europe and Latin America, underlining the potential benefits as well as pitfalls for companies.

With a record four Arab countries having qualified, including Liverpool striker Mohamed Salah's Egypt, one survey released this week said 92 percent of employees in the region plan to watch at least some of the tournament -- including a quarter who intend to secretly follow it by live-stream while at work.

"Other strategies employees reported they would use to watch the games during working hours, include requesting a full day of annual leave, leaving work early to watch the games, or simply calling in sick," said GulfTalent, an online recruitment portal, whose survey covered 8,000 respondents across the Middle East.

Russia's time zones mean a large swathe of humanity in Europe, the Middle East and Africa will be watching games in the early or late afternoon -- most likely during the workday.

Bosses are being urged by employment consultants to avoid an own goal by fostering team spirit with World Cup viewing parties, or inviting clients in for tournament-themed events.

In Germany, whose team are among the perennial tournament favourites, steelmaker ThyssenKrupp will organise a viewing event at its Essen site and others are planned at different plants, but "production can't stand still", a spokesman told the DPA news agency.

Lufthansa will run a rolling World Cup party -- with non-alcoholic drinks -- in its Frankfurt operations centre where flight crews rest between trips.

Despite German employers' efforts to accommodate shift patterns, the tournament will still cost Europe's biggest economy more than 2.6 billion euros ($3.1 billion) in lost production, according to a study by the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart.

- From pizzas to passengers -
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"This should be a real boon to supermarkets in terms of food and drinks sales."