Let them watch the World Cup. Your network will thank you.
Every four years, workplaces around the world face the same dilemma. The World Cup kicks off, calendars mysteriously empty during match times, and IT teams brace for an invisible surge in traffic.
Many employers try to block the streams and fight the inevitable. But what if the smarter business move is simply to accept reality?
If your employees are going to watch the World Cup anyway, don't make them do it individually on their work laptops. Give them a shared TV in the office or let them work from home. It's better for morale. And, as our latest research shows, it's better for your digital workplace too.
Kickoff isn't just for football
This year, as the World Cup kicked off, we decided to ask a question. How does all
that streaming affect the performance of an enterprise digital workplace? Analyzing the anonymous digital employee experience (DEX) data we have from nearly one million enterprise devices across North America, we found a intriguing answer.
As soon as kickoff starts, thousands of employees begin streaming the match in their browser. Across three group-stage fixtures, more than 26,000 devices streamed around 2GB of video each, a dramatic increase from a normal workday.
That's not just extra bandwidth. It's thousands of HD video streams competing with the business applications everyone else is trying to use.
Every stream has a cost
Streaming doesn't just consume network capacity, it makes employee devices work harder too.
Across every match studied, the same pattern emerged:
- CPU usage increased
- GPU usage climbed
- Memory swapping rose
- Disk activity spiked
The effect was consistent enough to repeat across every match analyzed, making it clear this wasn't a statistical fluke.
In fact, streamers' CPU usage increased by a median of 22% above their normal baseline, and 98% of measured customers experienced the same pattern. Some organizations saw increases of over 50%.
It's not just the fans who feel it
Here's where things get interesting.
Most monitoring tools can tell you that someone is consuming bandwidth. Nexthink can tell you whether that behavior actually affects everyone else. For some organizations, the impact stopped with the employee doing the streaming. Their device worked harder, but nobody else noticed.
For others, the strain travelled further.
Shared office Wi-Fi degraded. Overall DEX scores dropped. Even colleagues who never opened a football stream experienced measurable declines in their workplace experience because they were sharing the same network.
In other words, one person's "quickly checking the score" can become everyone else's slower Wi-Fi.
Here's the surprising good news
Before you panic, there's an important caveat: business-critical applications proved remarkably resilient.
Even in offices where streaming measurably affected Wi-Fi and overall employee experience, Nexthink found no meaningful degradation in core enterprise applications or collaboration tools. The network absorbed much of the impact before it reached the apps employees rely on to do their jobs.
That's reassuring but it doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist. Slower devices, degraded wireless performance and a poorer overall digital experience still have a real cost.
Stop fighting human nature
The World Cup is one of the biggest shared cultural events on the planet. People
are going to watch it.
Trying to stop them often creates a worse outcome than accommodating them. Instead of hundreds of employees opening individual browser streams across the corporate network, consider a simpler approach:
- Put a TV in a communal space and let people watch together.
- Encourage employees to work from home during key matches if appropriate.
- Schedule breaks around major fixtures where possible.
One shared screen generates far less network traffic than hundreds of separate HD streams. It also creates a better employee experience and shows you understand what matters to your people.
Sometimes the best IT strategy isn't another policy. It's a sofa, a television, and permission to cheer.
When the world watches football, you should watch the experience
The real lesson isn't about football. It's about visibility.
Traditional network monitoring can tell you traffic increased. Application monitoring can tell you whether your apps are healthy. But only DEX data can connect employee behavior to its real-world impact across devices, networks and the people who share them.
The World Cup simply makes those relationships impossible to ignore.
And with more matches still to come, organizations that understand what's happening beneath the surface will be far better placed to keep both employees, and the business, happy.
Want to learn more about Nexthink's solutions? Request a demo today.
