Summary
Surrey County Cricket Club has leaned into the shift toward hybrid work by inviting some fans to bring their jobs to its historic home at The Kia Oval in south London, where the club says it has created workplace-ready conditions. The initiative, dubbed “Work From Oval,” is designed around the idea that hybrid workers can complete their work while watching England’s County Championship.
The club’s approach includes upgrades to the ground’s Wi-Fi and designated work areas that feature desks, access to power and clear sight lines to the match, according to the Associated Press report. Surrey also sought to remove a barrier to participation for workers concerned about employer expectations, telling would-be attendees, “we won’t tell your boss.”
Surrey has hosted three County Championship matches this season as part of the concept, and it said “hundreds” have taken up the chance to work at the Oval during those home games. The club’s pitch plays on the fact that cricket crowds at England’s top domestic competition have often been criticized for being low, including a long-running joke comparing low attendance to “one man and his dog.”
On Friday, when Surrey played Sussex on the first day of the match, the Oval drew more than 6,000 people, the AP reported, with turnout boosted by weather and the prospect of a full day of play lasting more than seven hours. The stadium’s overall capacity is about 27,500, but Surrey’s organizers and attendees pointed to the crowd size as solid for a work day.
Among those who joined the trial was Harry Ashton, director of Elite Finance Solutions, who told the AP he usually works from a coworking space in nearby Wimbledon. Ashton said he paid just 15 pounds ($20) to work from the ground and watched the match while he worked.
The day included breaks that moved beyond office routines, with Ashton later joined by friends and, after working for a few hours, they enjoyed drinks at the venue, with the AP noting it was Friday and the start of a U.K. public holiday weekend. Another attendee, Matthew Balch, described the concept as one that other clubs could adopt to grow crowds by targeting remote workers and freelancers, telling the AP: “I think all of the counties should lean into the remote worker-freelancer market to grow attendances.”
Not all attendees were equally comfortable about being seen at a workplace setting, and at least one participant told the AP she insisted on anonymity because of the stigma she believed still surrounds hybrid work. The AP reported that the woman, who said she was 46 and works for a global company, described concerns about how she would be perceived.
Surrey’s experiment is arriving as the broader U.K. labor market continues to normalize some form of remote or hybrid work. The AP cited Office for National Statistics figures indicating that more than a quarter of working adults in the U.K. work remotely part of the time, and it noted that critics have argued hybrid work can harm productivity and work ethic as well as the wider economy. On the Oval’s field level that day, the AP said, evidence appeared to the attendees themselves that the remote-work format could fit into a match-day routine, with people doing tasks including calculations and Zoom calls.