World Cup fever is hitting the workplace.

Employees at companies from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to McDonald's Corp. are surreptitiously watching TV or checking out Web sites, faking cigarette breaks, even calling in sick to keep up with the tournament action. Some companies are clamping down -- but others are giving in to the surge in interest and hosting viewing parties and office pools, handing out face paint, or simply turning a blind eye when monitors are tuned to the games.

More than half the TV monitors on some trading floors at Deutsche Bank AG's New York offices -- including some sets belonging to executives -- were tuned to the U.S. game Monday, with periodic eruptions of emotion. (Mostly despair, as the U.S. team lost, 3-0. The U.S. plays Italy on Saturday, a game it likely must win in order to avoid elimination.) At J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., where TV screens have been split fairly evenly between financial news and World Cup games, employees displayed miniature national flags at their desks.

Welcome to "June Madness." As the world's biggest sporting event -- which began last Friday and involves 32 national teams -- plays out in Germany, soccer obsession in the U.S., especially among younger people, is finally reaching critical mass. It's also creating friction over how much time people can spend watching the tournament on the job.

It wasn't always this way. Only about 3.9 million Americans watched Brazil beat Germany in the final of the last World Cup, four years ago, according to Nielsen Media Research. That's a sliver of the 1.1 billion world-wide viewers calculated by Infront Sports & Media of Switzerland. This year, an average of 2.6 million people in the U.S. watched each of the first eight games of the World Cup on the Spanish-language Univision Television Network, almost triple the 900,000 who watched each of the first eight games of the 2002 contest, according to the network.

Anticipating heightened interest, U.S.-based corporations such as MasterCard Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co.'s Gillette unit are investing a combined hundreds of millions of dollars in official partnerships for the tournament, which ends July 9.

Soccer's newfound popularity in the U.S. comes as the first generation of American kids to storm the soccer fields is now well-established in the workplace -- and as American companies grow more international and bring over more foreign employees. This year's game schedule is making it easier to follow the tournament, too: In many previous World Cup years, die-hard fans in the U.S. endured middle-of-the-night matches. But this year, many of the 64 games, each lasting almost two hours, fall between nine and five on both coasts. And the U.S. team is ranked fifth -- its highest-ever ranking -- though many American fans are rooting for other countries' teams.

Juan Miguel Luna, a 30-year-old broker-dealer who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., says he plans to keep Web sites, such as those from Latin American newspapers, tucked away in the corner of his computer screen and to get as much time as he can in front of a television, whether the monitors at work or the screens at a restaurant downstairs. "I don't smoke but I will make up cigarette breaks," he says.

Using the fact that his parents are in town as an excuse, Seattle resident Dylan Wilbanks took Monday off to watch the U.S. team battle the Czech Republic from the comfort of his home, though he says his employers probably wouldn't have minded if he had told them the truth. Besides, he planned to work during halftime. "You will be amazed what you can do in 15 minutes," says the 33-year-old Web master at the University of Washington.

Andrew Leventhal, 24, an associate at Katzenbach Partners LLC in Houston, watched Friday's opening match in a company conference room with his computer on his lap. He had to jump on a conference call around the start of the second game and tried to listen in while still watching, but got distracted and returned to his desk. Mr. Leventhal says the company shuffled a few internal meetings around to accommodate fans and that they will be celebrating the July final at their boss's house.

Some employers are taking pre-emptive measures to keep employees focused. Fifteen percent of companies said they were blocking Internet content related to this year's World Cup, according to St. Bernard Software Inc., a San Diego-based Internet security company that surveyed more than 250, mostly U.S., companies.

Others are pandering, purchasing pricey plasma sets and throwing parties to boost morale and get employees to come to work. McDonald's franchise owner Paul Cottrell upgraded the cable service for 10 of his 16 New Jersey franchises and installed hanging televisions in some dining and break areas. "It provides an incentive to say, 'We have it here, so don't even think about staying home,'" he says.

To prevent staff from ducking out during office hours, executives at InFocus Corp., a maker of projection equipment, decked the elevator banks and lobbies of their Wilsonville, Ore., headquarters with large-screen TV sets broadcasting the games. "It means that they go in a bit earlier, can work normally and see the game as they go around the office," says chief marketing offer Scott Ballantyne.

But the costs of soccer mania may still add up. While comparable figures for the U.S. aren't available, one British employment-law expert estimates that the matches could cost the United Kingdom GBP 4 billion, or nearly $7.5 billion, in lost productivity. John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, says this year's tournament poses a threat to U.S. employers too, particularly due to the mounting number of ways fans can track matches online.

For the first time, FIFAworldcup.com, a site hosted by Yahoo Inc., is offering free video highlights. The reels, two minutes each, are often posted an hour after the conclusion of each game. Google Inc., meanwhile, is letting users add live scores, matches, standings, World Cup news and soccer videos to a custom home page.

Live games are available free on Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN360 Web site to users with certain Internet-service providers, including Verizon Communications Inc. From June 26 to July 19, ESPN will open up access to the service to anyone with a high-speed Internet connection.

Cliff Littlejohn, a 23-year-old stockbroker in New York, says he is going to multitask from his desk, checking the official Federation Internationale de Football Association site for updates about player injuries and lineups. But for games he can't miss, such as England versus Sweden on June 20, he says he may just try to leave work early.

ESPN.com isn't good enough for Rick Shaffer, 28, who works for a nonprofit land trust in Washington, D.C., where he doesn't have access to a television. After considering a variety of options, like purchasing a DVR player, he paid $11.99 for a month of a satellite service that allows him to watch the games -- albeit in German -- that start at 6 p.m., 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. But as he learned when a colleague spoiled the results of Germany versus Costa Rica, the approach has its costs. "I immediately sent an email out telling people not to discuss the scores when they are within earshot of my desk," he says.

Other fans are tweaking their schedules. "Let's just say the three U.S. matches have made it into my Microsoft Outlook," says Solomon Moshkevich, 24, an associate consultant at Bain & Company in New York, who says that as long as he gets his work done, he feels he can take a little more time doing it.

This year, Bain's Los Angeles office is displaying the matches on a large conference-room screen, and Monday hosted a breakfast viewing party for the first U.S. game. The Boston office is getting competitive, dividing its office into eight teams, each of which are assigned four World Cup teams to follow. Teams gain points based on the performance of the four countries to which they are assigned, along with other challenges.

Adidas AG, whose 1,000 Portland, Ore., U.S. headquarters employees are passionate soccer fans, is hosting massive viewing parties during the games complete with noisemakers and face paint. Adidas spokeswoman Kelly Olmstead says the company doesn't consider the events a distraction from work. "People are good at managing their time," she says.