Wow, there sure are a lot of sports on during the workday - The Verge

Right now, you could wake up and turn on Wimbledon. By the afternoon, there will be Euro matches. And then, in the evenings, we’ve had some thrillingly chaotic basketball — both men’s and women’s, plus hockey and baseball and the Tour de France. What a time to be alive (and working from home)! Best of all: it’s all streaming, and I think finally, in 2021, we’re in a place where it’s relatively effortless to watch sports without being tethered to the dregs of convoluted cable packages. Is this the golden age of watching sports during the workday?

I mean, I wouldn’t know. Because I, like all staffers at The Verge, am an extremely diligent employee and would never do anything that would distract me throughout the entire workday. Bosses, if you’re reading this, the reason I am not responding to your Slack messages has nothing to do with our secret and very active sports channel. No, I am probably updating Asana.

Besides, though it might be easier than ever, watching sports in 2021 means signing up for a number of confusingly named streaming services. Imagine telling your loved ones “Great news: we now have a trial FuboTV subscription” and then having to explain what FuboTV is. It’s a bit like Candyman rules. If you say FuboTV three times in your household, your partner leaves you.

Or it means spending an arm and a leg on YouTube TV, assuming your arm and leg are worth, collectively, $64.99 a month. (Though for the summer, I personally think it would be worth my two remaining limbs given you’ll be able to stream nearly all the sports in one place.)

Okay, yes, it’s never been simpler to stream live sports. But this is all moot, because I remain attentive and focused on my work and am absolutely not streaming Euro matches during my Zoom meetings. If you see my eyes drift to the right, know that it is not because the YouTube TV app is open on an iPad propped up beside my laptop. I just have a weird eye thing that happens when a meeting drags on for more than three minutes.

And for the co-workers who, earlier this week, heard me mutter “holy shit what the fuck” while I was accidentally unmuted in the middle of a video production call, it had nothing to do with Spain’s keeper whiffing an embarrassingly easy passback and letting the ball roll into the goal. No, I was just responding dramatically to, uh, whatever it was that we were talking about.

Since I am explaining myself, let me address a couple other instances: a few weeks back, did I turn in edits to a writer late because I was so enthralled with a Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic French Open semifinal match? The timing may seem coincidental, but those notes came in late because I had a migraine. The migraine just happened to last exactly the amount of time that it took for Nadal and Djokovic to complete what is now considered by many to be one of the greatest sets of tennis ever played.

And during the all-staff meeting, when I was furiously pounding my desk and chanting “COCO! COCO! COCO!” — that had nothing to do with Coco Gauff’s tight first-round Wimbledon victory over Francesca Jones. I merely thought someone had asked me what my favorite Pixar movie was.

Oh, and just a fair warning for later this month. My internet provider has alerted me that they will be doing scheduled maintenance. So my connection might be spotty, and I may be hard to reach, starting on July 23rd and going through August 8th.

Correction: An earlier version of this article called the soccer tournament the EuroCup. It’s the Euros. We regret the error.

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