{"id":2276,"date":"2026-06-22T22:07:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T22:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2276"},"modified":"2026-06-22T22:07:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T22:07:29","slug":"those-world-cup-hydration-breaks-have-fox-rolling-in-dough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2276","title":{"rendered":"Those World Cup \u201cHydration Breaks\u201d Have Fox Rolling in Dough"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tWhat is the value of a World Cup water break?<\/p>\n

For fans and players, they\u2019re not worth much at all, and have engendered complaints they break up the flow of the game and topple decades of strategy.<\/p>\n

But for Fox Sports, the company airing the tournament in the U.S., the dollar figures loom larger than Lionel Messi lining up for a penalty kick: At least $250 million, with a plausible value of $500 million-600 million.<\/p>\n

Yes, that\u2019s how much the company is likely to collect from advertisers for those sneaked-in ads from the likes of Nike, Adidas, Coke and Lenovo smack in the middle of gameplay under the notorious tag of a \u201chydration break.\u201d A media-buyer source tells The Hollywood Reporter <\/em>that the average cost of a 30-second spot during the soccer extravaganza is between $200,000 and $750,000, depending on a match\u2019s participants (i.e. is the U.S. playing?) and the stage of the tournament (knockout stages amp up the interest).<\/p>\n

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\n\tWith six minutes of hydration breaks per game, that adds up to anywhere between $2.5 million and $9 million per game. Multiplied by the 104 games played and of course factoring in that most buyers are buying packages that can run into the tens of millions of dollars, not single spots, this puts a plausible total above $500 million.<\/p>\n

Fox paid less than that for the entire rights to the tournament. (The full cost for English language rights to the 2026 World Cup is believed to be between $400 million and $500 million.)<\/p>\n

The further irony is that FIFA, which added the breaks earlier this year for the tournament as a global-soccer first, sold them as necessary because rising temperatures means players need time to stop and cool off \u2014 which, yes, means a Murdoch-owned company is making half a billion dollars thanks to climate change.<\/p>\n

\n\tFox has been able to charge as much for an ad because the games are being played on North American soil and thus in ideal, often primetime, windows. That has happened only once before in the past 30 years, with most World Cups in Europe or Asia and games taking place in the wee American hours. <\/p>\n

\n\tZac Kenworthy, VP of production for\u00a0Fox Sports, told THR <\/em>that the time zones were a \u201cgame changer\u201d for the network\u2019s coverage, allowing them to do more storytelling around the game to drive viewers to the action in prime viewing windows.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe know that these opportunities are going to be there, people are going to be home from work, they\u2019re going to be watching the game in communities together, and for us it\u2019s finding ways to do some storytelling around that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\n\tPaired with a compelling American team, and huge international stars like Lionel Messi and Erling Haaland getting prominent placement, it is a recipe for a windfall. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe U.S. team\u2019s Friday afternoon victory over Australia delivered nearly 15 million viewers, and even the opening match between Mexico and South Africa delivered over seven million viewers for Fox. The additional 40 games don\u2019t hurt either (a function of the tournament expanding from 32 to 48 teams and adding a knockout round).<\/p>\n

\n\tFox and its coverage team has also sought to create a pervasive sense of the game even for those not actively seeking it out. \u201cIn this day and age, where so much is behind walls and we see so many clickthrough things, I want it to be ubiquitous, I want people to be able to walk downtown and see that the games are playing on in the background, and you\u2019re flicking through, and there it is, there\u2019s the game,\u201d former player and longtime studio host Alexi Lalas tells THR<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Soccer has always been less appealing to broadcasters because the lack of intra-half stoppages means fewer revenue opportunities than other sports; advertising revenue instead tends to be concentrated more on in-stadium and on-uniform placements, which networks don\u2019t share in. Broadcasters instead have to wring as much as they can from halftime sales as well as the pre- and post-game shows. But Fox now seems to have found a workaround with the hydration breaks, with an assist from FIFA.<\/p>\n

Not all broadcasters are cashing in. Telemundo doesn\u2019t run full-on ads during the hydration breaks, instead kicking it back to the studio, with anchors thanking sponsors for allowing them not to cut away. Telemundo\u2019s ratings are solid, drawing millions of viewers for big matches, and a much more accessible streaming product on Peacock, but the Spanish-language rights are a trickier sell for some advertisers, a media buying source says. While the big sponsors are buying on both Fox and Telemundo, some smaller brands are choosing one or the other.<\/p>\n

\n\tPresumably those sponsors aren\u2019t paying half a billion dollars for the privilege.<\/p>\n

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If you’re mad about all those stoppages during the big football matches, Fox collecting hundreds of millions is the culprit to point to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1256,1133],"class_list":["post-2276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-fox-sports","tag-world-cup-2026"],"yoast_head":"\nThose World Cup \u201cHydration Breaks\u201d Have Fox Rolling in Dough - US Property Moves<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=2276\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Those World Cup \u201cHydration Breaks\u201d Have Fox Rolling in Dough - 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