You think Americans are serious about football?
Sunday, June 13th, 2010Not even close. Have you ever walked through the middle of an American city and seen something like this?
I wasn’t that surprised at the giant corporate-sponsored screen right in one of the main shopping squares; what surprised me was the number of people plopped down on the ground in front of the screen just watching football (and ads, of course). I should mention this wasn’t even a Dutch game; the Dutch team’s first game is on Monday against the Danish, at 13:30 our time.
Speaking of that, since the game is during work hours, my company is going to shut down the company cafeteria half an hour early Monday, so they can bring giant screens into the two dining areas to show the game. And for those stuck in the fab area, they’re live-streaming it to the computers. There was a message telling people who want to use that system to test it out on Friday. Presumably the thought is that they’ll lose less productivity that way than if half the company takes the afternoon off. They may not lose a whole lot less since people will probably spend the rest of the afternoon discussing the game, but at least they won’t have some people taking the whole day off or leaving an hour before the game to allow time to get home.
(If you need to be told, I’m talking about World Cup soccer.)