Web content security vendor Marshal claims that fans tuning into webcasts and audiofeeds could cost British firms more than GB pound 461m.
Marshal expects nearly three million Britons will spend half an hour of each working day watching coverage of matches or browsing the web for updates on scores.
IT services could also be compromised as staff download videos and interactive scoreboards, eating up valuable bandwidth and potentially leaving their organisation open to malicious threats.
Marshal researchers found that if one in ten of the UK’s 29 million workers spent 30 minutes a day away from their work for the duration of the competition, more than 31 million hours of productivity would be lost.
“Following England’s victory in 2003, rugby is now firmly placed as one of the nation’s favourite sports, which means that the six weeks of the world cup coverage looks set to dominate our screens,” said Michael Clifford, Marshal’s vice president in EMEA.
“Employers need to set and enforce policies on the acceptable use of the internet. Companies can control productivity and bandwidth consumption issues by implementing policies that limit Internet access to certain sites to lunch time, and before and after working hours.”
Marshal’s internet management solution, WebMarshal, enables administrators to enforce its company’s acceptable use policies as a means of improving productivity and reducing risk.
It is claimed to help restore the productivity potentially lost through non-business browsing with flexible time and bandwidth quotas assigned according to user, workstation or group, in addition to blocking offensive content and dangerous viruses.