FIFA to allow cut-away TV commercials during 2026 World Cup ‘hydration breaks’

FIFA will allow broadcasters to cut away to advertisements during the “hydration breaks” that will split up each half of every 2026 World Cup match, multiple people briefed on the guidelines or with direct knowledge of them told The Athletic.

Soccer’s global governing body announced in December that it would introduce a three-minute break midway through each 45-minute half at the World Cup. It promoted the breaks as a “player welfare” measure, but said there’d be “no weather or temperature condition in place, with the breaks being called by the referee in all games.”

FIFA officials also discussed the change with broadcast executives, and three sources, including one at FIFA, have now confirmed to The Athletic that broadcasters will be permitted to flip away from the match feed to show commercials, as they would during halftime or a timeout in basketball or American football.

There are, however, some guardrails, two sources said.

Broadcasters have been told that the ad break shouldn’t start within 20 seconds of the referee’s whistle pausing play, and that they shall return to the match feed more than 30 seconds before play resumes, according to written guidelines shared with The Athletic.

This means that they would have a two-minute, 10-second window for the commercials.

They are not obligated to cut away to any ads. They could return to a studio and show pundits analyzing the match. They could also stick with the match feed, or shrink it and show advertisements on only part of the screen. (In this scenario, commentators could continue to analyze the match, or the ads could take over audio feeds as well.)

If the broadcasters don’t fully cut away, though, they are only allowed to sell such advertising to FIFA sponsors, sources said.

This, at times, has been a sticky point with sponsors as soccer, like other sports, has become increasingly commercialized. Companies, such as Coca-Cola, which pays FIFA hundreds of millions of dollars to associate with the World Cup, have been protective of their exclusivity. They would surely push back if, say, Fox — which holds English-language World Cup broadcast rights in the U.S. — sold in-game ad space to Pepsi.

The hydration breaks, therefore, can only be “sponsored by Powerade,” a Coca-Cola product, and not by Gatorade, a Pepsi one, for example. Any split-screen or on-screen ad that runs adjacent to or on top of the match feed must be for a FIFA partner.

If the broadcaster cuts away to full-screen ads, on the other hand, it is allowed to sell those spots to anyone, sources said. Two industry veterans told The Athletic that they assumed FIFA sponsors would get a right of first refusal, but a FIFA source suggested it would be an open process.

Much of this is uncharted territory for soccer.

Decades ago, the World Cup was predominantly aired by public broadcasters, especially in Europe, many of which did not show commercials at all. But increasingly, FIFA has sold rights to private broadcasters, such as TyC Sports in Argentina or M6 in France. These private broadcasters will all be allowed to screen ads during the hydration breaks.

In stadiums, FIFA will control the branding of the breaks.

During last summer’s Club World Cup in the U.S., where hydration breaks were called when temperatures rose to dangerous levels, they were dubbed “Powerade hydration breaks” on stadium video boards. Turning them over to broadcasters, though, will likely yield more revenue, especially long-term.

“If you are FIFA, and you are going to have these breaks, you are doing simple math: is it more profitable for us to sell this at a premium to a (commercial) partner? Or is it more profitable to give it back to the broadcasters? And in this case, it’s a no-brainer,” Ricardo Fort, a longtime sports sponsorship executive, formerly at Coca-Cola and Visa, told The Athletic. “The broadcasters will make a lot more money — and will pay a lot more money — for a break like that.”

The 2026 World Cup will be the first major soccer tournament to pause all matches mid-half for three minutes — though not the first competition to pause at all. Two months after FIFA’s announcement, CONMEBOL, the South American soccer governing body, introduced 90-second hydration breaks to its club competitions, including the Copa Libertadores, regardless of “temperature or weather conditions.”

During CONMEBOL’s 90-second breaks, though, TV broadcasts don’t cut to ads. Instead, according to regulations, “cameras and microphones belonging to the CONMEBOL production team will be allowed to approach the area to capture images and sounds, including any instructions given by members of the coaching staff to the players.” CONMEBOL could then sell the spot to a sponsor itself.

Whether 90 seconds or three minutes, the breaks will also allow coaches to speak with players and tweak tactics.

And some broadcasters will see those moments as “good content,” as Joaquin Duro, Telemundo’s executive vice president of sports, told The Athletic. They might therefore be hesitant to cut away entirely to ads.

How will Fox, Telemundo use hydration breaks?

Neither Fox nor Telemundo — which holds Spanish-language World Cup rights in the United States — has detailed how it plans to commercialize the hydration breaks. Spokespeople for Fox Sports declined to comment. Sources briefed on Fox’s plans said the network will have some advertising during the breaks, but how it will be displayed is still unknown.

ITV in the UK, when asked about its plans, also declined to confirm anything.

Telemundo’s Duro, though, in an interview this week, described his approach and hinted that Telemundo would stay, at least in part, with the match feed.

“I would say that I am a soccer fan first — meaning, I like to watch the game, and I like to listen to everything that happens, even during hydration breaks,” he told The Athletic. “And like I said, there’s a lot of nice things that happen there. There’s a lot of stories to read with the coaches: How do they react to the players? What are the coaches telling the players? How do the players interact?”

He clarified: “Definitely, our sponsors will be present, because it’s also another opportunity for us to give them more exposure.”

Duro mentioned that on Telemundo’s broadcasts of other competitions, when there were cooling breaks triggered by heat, there were banner-type ads overlaid on top of the match feed, and said that the network’s World Cup broadcast would have some of that. But he reiterated twice that “there’s a lot of good content that comes out from those hydration breaks,” and that “we plan to exploit all of that.”

And he didn’t sound thrilled that cutting to commercials was even an option.

“For the first time, in a way, soccer will become almost like a four-quarter (American) football or basketball (game),” Duro said. “Which, I guess, for American sports, it makes sense. For soccer? I don’t know. Soccer is different.”

Andrew Marchand contributed reporting to this story

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