I experienced my first World Cup Fever in 2010, while living in Switzerland. Coming from the United States where football means shoulder pads and touchdowns, I had never paid one bit of attention to what the rest of the world calls football. And, as such, I didn’t give the World Cup one bit of thought until the night that Switzerland upset Spain. While the game was playing, no cars were going up and down the street. The trams were running with just the driver and maybe two or three people. It was like the entire world shut down.

We live in an apartment building and when something good would happen, we could hear a unified cheer through the building. We finally turned the game on, because we felt almost compelled to do so. The football fever didn’t end when Switzerland lost; the people simply transferred their loyalty to their next favorite country. For most of our neighborhood, that was the German team.

Soccer is gaining popularity in the U.S. and for the 2014 World Cup, your business may have quite a few people who are as invested as my Swiss neighbors are. The World Cup lasts almost a month, so you can’t, of course, just shut down and wait for it all to end. So, how do you make sure productivity remains high, even as the game is on?

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