World Cup waterbreaks offer lucrative opportunity for broadcasters

LONDON, June 10 : With hot weather due and memories fresh of the scorching 2025 Club World Cup, FIFA has for the first time mandated three-minute hydration breaks in each half for all 104 matches of the World Cup starting this week in the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

While players replenish and viewers perhaps grab some snacks, broadcasters have a big new opportunity to give advertisers extra prime-time air and boost their revenues.

The stoppages will be a further instance of the World Cup mirroring American-style sports events packed with commercials and razzmatazz, with a halftime show featuring Colombian singer Shakira at the July 19 final echoing the National Football League's Super Bowl event.

FIFA says its approach to water breaks is based on player-welfare concerns, but it could also support the growth of media rights as networks are incentivised to compete by the revenue opportunity.

Such breaks at a World Cup were first implemented during the Netherlands v Mexico game in 2014 in Brazil when temperatures exceeded 32 degrees Celsius, and were then considered on a match-by-match basis.

Michael Johnson, a research analyst covering the U.S. sports industry for S&P Global, told Reuters the addition of hydration breaks could be “extremely valuable and could potentially command those Super Bowl level prices within that seven to probably nine-million-dollar range”.

Advertisers recognise what exposure they could gain from the World Cup - the Argentina v France final from Qatar in 2022 reached a total of 1.42 billion viewers.

“U.S. viewers are used to the NFL style model, NBA style model four quarters. They're used to in-game breaks. This World Cup is essentially a mirror to those style models,” Johnson said.

Conversely, in European