This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here.
When the World Cup kicks off on Thursday, viewers across the world will see something they have never seen before in a soccer match: in-game ads.
For the first time, FIFA has mandated three-minute “hydration breaks” in each half for all 104 matches of the World Cup, during which time broadcasters will be permitted to show commercials.
The governing body of global soccer has described the breaks as in service of “player welfare.” The stoppages were implemented as a one-off during a Netherlands vs. Mexico match played in Brazil in 2014 when temperatures reached above 90 degrees. But for this World Cup, the breaks will take place no matter the temperature.
According to The Athletic, a handful of guardrails will govern the breaks. The stoppages do not have to feature ads—they could just show footage of the players on the sideline, hydrating and adjusting their strategy. If they do cut away to commercial, they can only do so 20 seconds after the break has begun and must return to the game 30 seconds before play resumes. This gives the broadcasters two minutes and ten seconds to work with per half.
According to a representative for Telemundo, which owns the rights to the Spanish-language broadcast of the tournament in the U.S., the promotions shown during the breaks will largely consist of “squeezeback ads,” enabling the broadcast to show the scene on the pitch while enveloping the shot with a branded wrapper.
Fox, which owns the rights to the English-language broadcast in the U.S., did not respond to a request for comment.
The breaks mark a notable milestone in the broadcast history of the sport, which typically consists of two, 45-minute periods of ad-free play separated by a halftime. In introducing almost five minutes of potential commercial inventory to each match, FIFA is fundamentally reshaping the game.
This could have profound implications for the sport. It could spark fan backlash, as commercial stoppages are a hallmark of American sports but are absent in global soccer. In Britain, for instance, the broadcaster ITV has said it will not show commercials during the breaks due to strict advertising limits set by the U.K. regulator Ofcom.
The in-game pauses also effectively split the two-half match into four quarters, further mirroring the structure of American pastimes like football and basketball.
The spots themselves could become, in time, more valuable than Super Bowl inventory, given the global scale of soccer.
The Argentina vs. France World Cup Final in 2022, for instance, drew 1.42 billion viewers, dwarfing the audience generated by the Super Bowl. If Super Bowl spots retail for upward of $10 million for 30 seconds, these hydration breaks could ostensibly garner even higher prices than that in the near future.
This time around, the revenue generated by these hydration break commercials will likely be marginal. Fox did not tout the inventory during its upfronts, and buyers are unaccustomed to budgeting for it. Critically, Fox also scored a sweetheart deal in its right to broadcast the World Cup in the U.S., owing to a negotiation that occurred in 2014, according to The New York Times.
As a result, Fox is only paying around $500 million to air the tournament, about a third of what experts say the rights should cost. The low cost base means that any incremental revenue, such as these novel ad breaks, is a windfall to the company even if sold at a low rate.
But if this tournament proves to be a precedent, and the hydration break rights eventually become a standard part of the World Cup, broadcasters could market the in-game ads as some of the most coveted commercial air time in global media.
FIFA has yet to say whether the hydration breaks will continue after 2026, but the 2030 and 2034 tournaments will be held in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, respectively, all countries where summertime temperatures can reach extremes.
A revenue squeeze
The introduction of these in-game ads is a byproduct of a larger trend reshaping the media landscape.
In recent years, as audiences have fragmented and mass viewership has disappeared, live sports have remained one of the last reliable means of reaching a large, engaged audience.
As such, professional leagues like the NFL and NBA have raised the price of the right to broadcast their games, forcing broadcasters to fork over a cumulative $110 billion to air NFL games and $76 billion for the NBA. The NFL, in all likelihood, is planning to force its media partners to renegotiate and pay even more for its broadcast rights before their current contract expires.
The media partners paying these fees, which include legacy brands like Disney and CBS, as well as new-money firms like YouTube and Netflix, are dedicating larger and larger portions of their budgets to financing these deals. Sports’ share of global content spending jumped from 17% to 26% between 2023 and 2025, as I reported last month.
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The exorbitant spending required to obtain these rights means that these companies have less money to spend on other kinds of content, such as original series. One industry consultancy, LightShed Partners, has gone so far as to question whether networks should abandon general entertainment altogether in favor of sports.
It also means that rights holders need to generate more revenue from their packages, which they can accomplish by introducing more inventory or raising prices.
In practice, media rights holders pass these higher costs on to customers, either through larding the games with more ads or sponsorships, or raising the price of a cable or streaming service subscription. In other words, the high price of sports rights ends up costing consumers—either by degrading the viewing experience or in access fees.
While media rights holders do not share in ticket sales, the outrageous price of tickets—to the World Cup, as well as events like the NBA Finals—represent a similar line of logic.
FIFA has been criticized for using dynamic pricing to sell tickets, ensuring that each unit is priced to its absolute maximum. Tickets to the NBA Finals games here in New York are setting new records, pricing out nearly all but the wealthiest of fans. Taken together, the economics of both reflect an ecosystem whose every element has been ruthlessly financialized.
Of course, such are the laws of supply and demand. The live sports industry will continue to charge these premiums until the market no longer supports them, and there are nascent signs of consumer revolt. Rupert Murdoch is lobbying to undo the antitrust exemption protecting the NFL, 33 states are suing Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and the sticker shock of World Cup and NBA Finals tickets are souring consumer sentiment.
Whether these efforts bear fruit remains to be seen. In my experience, when it comes to advertising, once new inventory has been introduced it is rarely walked back. Fittingly, the most American contribution to the World Cup this year might just be that unwelcome realization.
Talking Heds
Samsung Gets Original (EXCLUSIVE): On Friday, Samsung TV Plus debuted its first original scripted series, created exclusively for the FAST platform by YouTube creator extraordinaire Dhar Mann. The series, called Unlikely Romances, is not the point—its best quality is that it is easily forgotten. The real news is that Samsung, which manufactures and sells TVs, is getting into the business of original scripted content, a gambit designed to help it capitalize on its distribution advantage, i.e. the fact that every TV it sells comes preinstalled with Samsung TV Plus as its home channel. As a FAST platform, STVP has historically stuck to licensed and catalog material, which is cheaper than original programming. But, in the newly cost-conscious streaming ecosystem, YouTube creators are a cheat code, as they can produce original content for a fraction of the price. Is it quality? Debatable. Will there be more of it? Almost certainly.
Mark on Vox: I joined The Addition podcast with Charlotte Henry last week to discuss some of my latest reporting on the ongoing breakup of the Vox Media portfolio. Even if you have been following along with the saga, I shared some details in this conversation that never made it into my (or others’) reporting, so it is a fun listen for that reason alone. Here is the YouTube link, but of course you can listen to it/watch it wherever you listen to/watch podcasts nowadays, which at this point is basically anywhere.
Workweek at Work: The independent media company Workweek, whose product innovation is often overlooked because of its niche focus on professional communities, introduced a new product last week called Partner Platform. Founder Adam Ryan walked me through the offering, which effectively brings a level of fidelity to newsletter advertising that exists nowhere else. In short, Workweek only tracks ad engagement when it is verified and tied to a relevant user. It also pushes that engagement to advertisers’ CRMs. In one case study, a SaaS company reported that 40% of closed deals included someone who had engaged with a Workweek ad—before sales interacted with that target company. Jacob Donnelly has a great write-up. Workweek is more proof that B2B media will have far more staying power than its consumer-centric counterparts.
Hearst Ads Eye AI (EXCLUSIVE): On Tuesday, Hearst Magazines unveiled a new advertising product that will become available to clients next week. Called Aura IQ, the platform uses artificial intelligence to ingest RFPs and automatically generate bespoke campaigns for brand clients, complete with wholly unique audiences composed specifically of Hearst users most likely to engage with the creative. The product is one of the few practical uses of AI that has found its way into the media-planning process. It is also another data point in a larger trend I have lately noticed, in that AI is enabling publishers’ comparatively small engineering teams to build proprietary products. For all of the ways that the technology is making life harder for media brands, AI is increasingly allowing their software teams to ideate and ship products at a previously unimaginable clip.
The Bad Trade Desk: Senior executives continue to flee The Trade Desk, including four CFOs and four board members in the last year. On Monday, its chief revenue officer, Anders Mortensen, left after just seven months. Frustration among departing executives has centered on the company’s rising take rate and internal leadership decisions under CEO Jeff Green, my colleague Trishla Ostwal reported. Green, who famously in March invested roughly $150 million in Trade Desk stock, has seen the value of that investment decline around 20%, or around $30 million, since then. The S&P 500, meanwhile, is up 7% in the same period.
Quote/Unquote
On Tuesday, I moderated a live panel at Tribeca X, the creator-centric spinoff of the Tribeca Film Festival. On stage with me were Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler, Track Star founder and creator Jack Coyne, and former Rolling Stone CEO Gus Wenner, who is now involved with Track Star.
The topic of conversation was creators and the infrastructure they need to succeed. Strickler, who is also working on a new legal framework called Artist Corporations, had a unique vision for the future of the creator economy, while Wenner and Coyne spoke to their plans to turn Track Star into MTV for the social era. Below is an excerpt from the conversation, which I will share later this week when it airs in full.
This interview has been edited.
Mark Stenberg: How is AI influencing how Kickstarter thinks about supporting creators and their projects?
Yancey Strickler: It’s still a third-rail issue in the creative community, a threat to many smaller artists who have made a living through platforms online. It’s seen as a core labor threat, and I don’t think that perspective is wrong. There’s a reckoning that’s going to happen, and I don’t know where it all nets out. But I personally think we’re in the Napster era of AI. Maybe we have one of the higher public opinions of AI right now versus what it might be in the future.
Mark: Jack, same question. Are you using AI to help grow the business?
Jack Coyne: There’s one interesting application in particular. We’re building an app—basically a game you can play every day, like Wordle, but it’s Track Star, so you guess songs. Fans of the show have been requesting it from the very beginning, and we were able to build a prototype using Claude in a matter of a couple weeks. That’s something that would have cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars—maybe a million—to build ten years ago.
Mark: Jack, what’s a creator resource or bit of infrastructure you were surprised you needed?
Jack: Honestly? QuickBooks. When we started partnering together, Gus was like, “Let’s take a look at the P&L,” and I was doing the books for the business myself. That’s one of the things that’s changed since we started working together: we have a bookkeeper now. But genuinely, there’s a story connected to the money you’re spending and the money you’re making, and paying attention to that as a creator helps you prioritize how you should be working. I say it jokingly, but that’s the tool I’ve used more than any in my business.
Gus Wenner: When we had our first call, looking at all the numbers before we did the deal, I had on the guy who was CFO of Wenner Media before we sold it—he worked there for 25 years, he’s amazing, and he’s since joined us. We got off the call and he just looked at me and said, “Jack’s really good at QuickBooks.” I thought that said a lot. Definitely better than the opposite.
Pulled Quotes
“If you’re just sitting there trying to get clicks, then you’re feeding the lab rat cocaine in the corner of the cage.”
Lupa Systems CEO James Murdoch, on his content strategy for Vox Media
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“Content is the ‘fuel’ that drives Paramount’s ability to compete.”
Paramount legal head Makan Delrahim, in a letter to the D.O.J. advocating for its acquisition of Warner Bros.
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“Scott Pelley is a flawed protagonist.”
The Rebooting author Brian Morrissey, on the lessons from Pelley’s ouster at 60 Minutes
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“God put it on our hearts to specifically preach the gospel through an energy drink.”
The anonymous founders of Yahweh, one of several new Christian energy drinks
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