New research from Qlik finds that 90% of employees plan to watch matches during work hours — and most expect to use AI tools to keep up. What that tells us about where workplace productivity is actually headed.

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For decades, major sporting events have quietly dismantled workplace productivity one distraction at a time. The World Cup, the Olympics, the Super Bowl — employers have managed each with a familiar mix of gentle policy, resigned tolerance, and the occasional locked browser. The 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is set to be different. Not because workers will be less distracted, but because for the first time, a significant portion of the workforce has a credible tool for managing the gap between what they watch and what they get done.

That tool is AI. And according to new research from Qlik, the data and analytics company, the World Cup is shaping up to be one of the first large-scale, real-world tests of whether AI productivity tools actually deliver under disrupted conditions.

The survey, conducted by Censuswide across 2,000 US employees who plan to follow or watch the tournament, produces numbers that should make employers sit up. Nine in ten respondents say they are likely to watch matches live during work hours, including 60% who describe themselves as very likely to do so. More than two-thirds say they would reschedule or skip meetings to watch a game. And yet more than half — 53% — expect their overall productivity or output to increase during the tournament. Only 12% expect it to fall.

On its face, that reads like wishful thinking. But the mechanism workers are describing is specific. They are not claiming they will simply work harder. They are pointing to AI tools including ChatGPT, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot as the mechanism through which they expect to recover lost time. Nearly half of respondents say they would use AI to catch up faster — more than the 41% who say they would simply work outside of normal hours.

The Catch-Up Mechanism That Arrived Just in Time

The specific tasks respondents are offloading to AI are telling. Drafting emails and written updates faster was cited by 38% of workers, the same proportion who said they would use AI to reprioritize their workload. Pulling together reports or analysis more quickly was flagged by 37%, matching those who said they would use AI to summarize meetings they missed or only partly attended. Another 36% said they would use AI simply to catch up on work they fell behind on.

What that list describes is not a collection of experimental AI use cases. It is, effectively, the core workday of a large portion of the knowledge workforce: email, meetings, reports, prioritization. The World Cup is not creating new AI behavior — it is accelerating and making visible behavior that was already emerging in offices across the country.

"The World Cup landing in North America isn't just a cultural moment, it's one of the first large-scale, predictable tests of whether AI can actually protect productivity when the workday gets disrupted. Employees are already planning to use it to catch up, reprioritize and keep work moving around matches. The organizations that come out ahead won't be those that police every distraction."James Fisher, Chief Strategy Officer, Qlik.

A Generational Divide That Points to the Future

The data carries a pronounced generational dimension that is worth examining carefully, because it reveals something about where the relationship between flexibility and output is heading. Among Gen Z respondents, 94% plan to watch matches during work hours; among Millennials, the figure is 92%. But these same groups are also the most likely to report an increase in AI usage during the tournament, at 70% and 69% respectively. Among Gen X workers, 56% expect their AI use to rise; among Baby Boomers, just 27%.

More striking is the productivity confidence gap. Gen Z workers are the most likely group to expect their output to increase during the World Cup, 64% believe this, compared to 55% of Millennials, 46% of Gen X, and just 14% of Baby Boomers. What younger workers appear to have internalized is a belief that flexibility and output are not in fundamental opposition, provided the right tools are in place. Whether that confidence is entirely warranted remains to be proven. But the direction of travel it suggests — toward a workforce that expects to manage its own time and use technology to compensate for disruption — is already well underway.

What Employers Are Actually Dealing With

The data on employee expectations of their employers is equally instructive. The largest group of respondents — 38% — say they expect their employer to allow World Cup viewing during work hours while still expecting work to continue as normal. Another 27% anticipate their employer actively encouraging flexibility through adjusted schedules. Just 15% expect active monitoring or restrictions. This is a workforce that is largely not asking for permission. It is describing the arrangement it expects to be in place.

For organizations, that framing shifts the management challenge. The question is less about whether employees will be distracted — they will — and more about whether the AI tools available to those employees are actually integrated into real workflows in ways that make catch-up reliable. As James Fisher of Qlik put it: "They'll be the ones that gave their teams AI connected to the right data, embedded in real workflows, so it performs when the workday gets messy, not just under ideal conditions."

The 10% Problem: Uneven AI Adoption Remains Real

Before any conclusions are drawn about a workforce uniformly armed with AI catch-up tools, the research flags a significant caveat. One in three respondents say their AI usage will not increase at all during the tournament. A further 10% say they would not use AI for any work task, even if the World Cup significantly disrupted their day. That gap — between the workers who have integrated AI into their workflow and those who have not — reflects genuine differences in comfort, trust, access, and organizational context that will not close simply because a major event arrives to stress-test them.

That disparity matters for how the World Cup data should be read. The optimistic productivity numbers are, in important respects, a story about one portion of the workforce: younger, AI-adopting, already-accustomed to mixing flexibility with output. The picture for workers who have not integrated AI tools is likely more traditional — which is to say, more disrupted.

Why This Moment Is More Significant Than It Appears

Workplace disruption events are not new. What is new is the existence of a reasonably mature set of productivity tools that workers are planning, in advance and in detail, to use to manage that disruption. The World Cup provides something that most AI productivity research lacks: a predictable, large-scale, time-bounded real-world test. When the tournament concludes, there will be actual before-and-after output data across millions of workers who used AI to compensate for disrupted workdays. That data will tell employers, tool developers, and workers themselves more about what AI productivity tools actually deliver than any controlled study could.

The answer may confirm the confidence workers currently express. Or it may reveal that drafting an email faster does not fully offset the cost of missing a meeting, and that summarizing a discussion you were not present for produces subtly worse decisions. Either outcome will be informative. For now, what the Qlik research makes clear is that the future of work debate has moved on from whether AI belongs in the office. It has moved to whether AI is robust enough to hold up when the office decides, somewhat collectively, to watch football.

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