I don’t know about you, but there are sports broadcasts that I have saved in the calendar of my mobile phone, like the Barcelona Masters Finals of paddle tennis or the Tour de France. There is one that is much longer, more variable and also almost obligatory viewing: the World Cup. Although it is essentially always played on these dates, the venues change and that is sometimes a real chore… if you want to see it live.
This 2026 edition is played in the United States, Canada and Mexico and that means it takes up my afternoons, but there are places in Asia and the Middle East where it is literally stealing their sleep: if they want to watch the games live, it is better to leave sleeping for another day. Is the “dream fee” to pay if you like football.
When FIFA awarded the 2026 World Cup to North America, it implicitly set prime time in the Eastern time zone of the United States. That is equivalent to between 00:00 and 04:00 in the Maghreb, between 01:00 and 05:00 in Saudi Arabia and between 02:00 and 06:00 in Pakistan. As we have already suffered in our flesh, such as in the last finals of the King’s Cup in Spain, the schedule of the host state is taken into account and the rest of the global audience there manages.
That the World Cup headquarters is traveling is a way to publicize football throughout the planet, but also to make a profit from a lucrative business in addition to sports tourism: broadcasts (there is another indirect one in the impressive infrastructures that are built). According to the official FIFA financial report For the 2023-2026 cycle, total income from television rights amounts to $4,264 million. And in that scenario there is a clear winner: Europe is the most valuable individual market with nearly 1.4 billion. It is followed by North America, which exceeds 1,000 million. Both regions concentrate more than 60% of the total, according to SVG Europe with data from the consulting firm Caretta Research.
So someone on Reddit has decided to calculate that “Sleep Tax” with the 48 teams participating in the World Cup ordered by the cost of sleep that their fans will accumulate during the group stage. From FIFA match schedulethe IANA time zone database, WikipediaPython and little else. The result is what you see below these lines:
The sleep rate of the 2026 World Cup. tohigh12 via Reddit
How have you calculated it? This sleep rate assigns a weight to each minute of the game based on which time zone it is in, taking into account the start time in the local time of each team’s fans and using a visualization model that takes into account the start of the game + 120 minutes. Thus, the minutes between 22:00 and midnight are worth 1x, between 0:00 and 02:00 they are worth 2x, between 02:00 and 06:00 they are worth 3x and between 06:00 and 08:00, 1.5x. Those periods in which most people sleep are worth more (although it is a simplification, because maybe I go to bed at 11 p.m. and you at 1 a.m.): the more points, the less you sleep.
The final score is obtained by dividing the weighted minutes by 60. An example: a match that starts at 23:00 local time accumulates 3 points: 60 minutes at 1x plus 60 minutes at 2x. It is true that this Sleep Tax method has obvious limitations such as assuming that the fans follow the three group stage matches, it does not distinguish between work days and holidays and that fixed window of 120 minutes may fall short between overtime and the pre-match, but it is a clear, transparent and reproducible methodology.
Which country is sleeping the least following its team in the 2026 World Cup
The longer the bar, the worse the fans sleep: Their matches fall at late night or early morning hours. Algeria leads the ranking with 18 points and seven countries, including Mexico and Canada, have 0.0: they do not lose a minute of sleep.
But this is not something new: without going any further, the last World Cups steal those hours of sleep in other latitudes. Thus, in Brazil 2014 those who paid this most expensive fee were the fans from Asian countries. In Qatar 2022, geographical concentration benefited Europe and Africa, which followed the matches in the evening.
Sleep deprivation has real and measurable consequences: executive functions deteriorate if there are lack of hours of rest, something that we pay in decision making, impulse control, behavior or memory, which affects our day-to-day tasks such as driving, working or interacting. In fact, according to the study Sleep Duration and Executive Function in Adultscognitive impairment after a single night of poor sleep is equivalent to having a blood alcohol level comparable to the legal limit for driving. Stringing together a couple of weeks of early morning matches is more than a sacrifice: in a football country that is also excelling in the tournament, it can become a public health problem.
Who wins and who loses. Thus, the big dream losers of this edition of the 2026 World Cup are the countries of North Africa and the Middle East: Algeria (18.0), Tunisia (14.5), the Czech Republic and Scotland (12.0), Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Norway and Iraq (11.0). Spain obtains a 6.0, with a match starting at 02:00 peninsular time. The hosts Mexico and Canada, along with Ecuador, Panama and South Korea, score 0.0: they play at schedules completely aligned with their daily lives.
In Xataka | Where you can watch the 2026 World Cup depending on the operator you have
In Xataka | The good news is that there is a World Cup this summer. The bad news is that the exams are going to be worse
Cover | Data is Beautiful
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings