The countries most exposed to World Cup 2026's overnight hours
Peer-reviewed research on past World Cups found national equity markets lose an average of 26 basis points on days after overnight matches, and 22 basis points on days with in-trading-hours distraction (Cai, Fan & Ko, 2023, *Global Finance Journal*). World Cup 2026's North American venues concentrate kickoffs in the overnight hours for fans across East Asia, Oceania, and South Asia. The Timezone Tax score below ranks each qualified nation by how much of its match schedule falls outside prime viewing hours.
Claim Ledger6 claims
Every factual claim on this card is tagged by source tier. Verified = primary source confirmed. Attributed = cited from peer-reviewed research. Inferred = our analysis based on verified inputs.
| Claim | Tier | Source |
|---|---|---|
| World Cup 2026 has 104 matches, 48 teams, 12 groups | Verified | FIFA official schedule, fifa.com |
| Equity markets lose ~26 basis points the day after overnight World Cup matches | Attributed | Cai, Fan & Ko (2023), Global Finance Journal Vol. 56, DOI 10.1016/j.gfj.2023.100823 |
| Equity markets lose ~22 basis points on days with in-trading-hours World Cup distraction | Attributed | Cai, Fan & Ko (2023), Global Finance Journal |
| North American venues concentrate overnight hours for East Asian / Oceanian / South Asian fans | Inferred | Our analysis: mapping of 104 FIFA-confirmed kickoff times to local hour-of-day per nation |
| Country rankings by Timezone Tax score | Inferred | Our methodology: hour-of-day pain scale applied per country timezone |
| Score scale (0–100 normalised pain) | Inferred | Normalised: avg(pain) ÷ max(pain) × 100 |
What we do NOT claim: This card does not extrapolate the peer-reviewed equity-market findings into a workforce productivity figure. The published research measures stock market returns, not GDP or labour output. A productivity number would require a separate methodology, which we have not built.