How much is a World Cup Water Break worth?
For fans and players, it’s not worth much at all, and has drawn complaints that it disrupts the flow of the game and undoes decades of strategy.
But for Fox Sports, the company broadcasting the tournament in the United States, the dollar figures loom larger than Lionel Messi lining up to take a penalty kick: at least $250 million, with a reasonable value of $500 million to $600 million.
Yes, that’s how much the company is likely to collect from advertisers for those sneaky ads from the likes of Nike, Adidas, Coke and Lenovo that pop up mid-play under the infamous “hydration break” tag. says a media buyer’s source Hollywood Reporter The average cost of a 30-second spot during soccer celebrations ranges between $200,000 and $750,000, depending on the participants in the match (i.e. is the USA playing?) and the stage of the tournament (knockout stages increase interest).
With six-minute hydration breaks, that works out to between $2.5 million and $9 million per game. Multiplying 104 games played and of course taking into account that most buyers are buying packages that can be worth tens of millions of dollars, not single points, this puts a reasonable total at over $500 million.
Fox paid less than that for the rights to the entire tournament. (The full cost of English rights to the 2026 World Cup is thought to be between $400 million and $500 million.)
The other irony is that FIFA, which earlier this year added rest periods to the tournament as soccer’s first global tournament, has sold them as necessary because rising temperatures mean players need time to stop and cool off — which, yes, means a Murdoch-owned company is making hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to climate change.
Fox was able to charge the same amount for the ad because the games are played on North American soil and therefore often in ideal prime-time windows. This has only happened once before in the past 30 years, with most World Cups being held in Europe or Asia and matches being played in the early American hours.
Zach Kenworthy, Vice President of Production at Fox Sports, said: THR The time zones were a “game changer” for the network’s coverage, allowing it to tell more stories about the game to draw viewers into the action in key viewing windows.
“We know those opportunities are going to be there, people are going home from work, they’re going to be watching the game in communities together, and for us, it’s about finding ways to do some stories around that,” he says.
Combined with a compelling American team, and major international stars like Lionel Messi and Erling Haaland gaining prominence, it’s a recipe for a windfall.
The U.S. team’s Friday afternoon win over Australia brought in nearly 15 million viewers, and even the opener between Mexico and South Africa brought in more than seven million viewers for Fox. The extra 40 matches wouldn’t hurt either (expanding the tournament function from 32 to 48 teams and adding a knockout round).
Fox and its coverage team also sought to create a broad feel for the game even for those not actively searching for it. “In this day and age, where there’s so much behind walls and we see so many things being clicked on, I want it to be everywhere, I want people to be able to walk downtown and see games being played in the background, and you scroll through, and there it is, the game,” said former gamer and longtime studio host Alexi Lalas. THR.
Football has always been less attractive to broadcasters because the lack of half-time stops means fewer revenue opportunities compared to other sports. Instead, advertising revenue tends to focus more on in-stadium placements and on uniforms, in which the networks are not involved. Instead broadcasters have to squeeze in as much as possible from halftime sales as well as pre- and post-match shows. But it looks like Fox has now found an alternative solution to hydration breaks, with help from FIFA.
Not all broadcasters take advantage of this. Telemundo does not run full commercials during breaks, instead bringing them back to the studio, where announcers thank sponsors for allowing them not to stop. Telemundo’s ratings are strong, attracting millions of viewers for big games, and it’s an accessible streaming product on Peacock, but Spanish-language rights represent a tougher sell for some advertisers, a media buying source says. While big sponsors buy both Fox and Telemundo, some smaller brands choose one or the other.
Presumably, these sponsors are not paying half a billion dollars for the privilege.
