Hydration breaks tipped for Europe’s top leagues as US World Cup broadcasters pocket $250m

Hydration breaks have caused much debate at this summer’s World Cup.

FIFA’s decision to mandate three-minute pauses midway through each half of each game has been subject to heavy backlash from those inside the stadium and soccer fans watching at home.

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The breaks disrupt the momentum of matches and have been criticised by both coaches and players. Loud jeers from supporters at every World Cup venue often follow the stoppage.

But while hydration breaks are detested by many, they are proving a goldmine for TV broadcasters, and could soon become the norm.

An extra four minutes and 20 seconds of advertising space per game has been sold this summer. Across the entire tournament, that’s an added seven hours, 30 minutes and 40 seconds of ads served to viewers worldwide.

In the United States alone, an average 30-second World Cup slot on Fox Sports costs between $200,000 and $300,000. That price rises to around $750,000 during the closing stages of the competition.

With potential for eight extra 30-second ad slots per game, hydration breaks alone are likely to generate more than $250m.

That figure alone is more than half of the $485m Fox paid for the English-language rights to the tournament.

From a broadcast point of view, hydration breaks are a no brainer, and ESPN reports it will be ‘hard to move backwards’ once the World Cup is done.

Hydration breaks have media ‘salivating’ and big changes could come

“The legacy of this summer’s World Cup is not likely to be political interference or referee conspiracies that benefit Lionel Messi. It’s going to be hydration breaks,” sports business reporter Ben Strauss wrote Monday.

He suggests that, after speaking to a dozen media and soccer executives, the breaks are ‘likely to become a key topic in media rights negotiations going forward.’

“It would be hard to move backwards once hydration breaks have been shown to work because of the dollars associated with it,” David Levy, the former president of Turner who now runs a sports marketing agency,” told ESPN.

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“And if it’s not hydration breaks, it will be something else.”

Another media executive explained: “This is found money for soccer, where companies can reach a captive audience during the most important parts of the game.

“There are media companies salivating at what Fox has been able to do.”

While viewers in some areas, like the United Kingdom, don’t see extra adverts during the hydration breaks at the World Cup, insiders have speculated that domestic leagues could embrace the change as global broadcasters battle ‘vulnerable’ and ‘flat’ revenues.

Could soccer implement hydration breaks beyond the World Cup?

While it’s unlikely that major European competitions — like the Premier League, La Liga and the Bundesliga — will buy into the breaks anytime soon, they could be implemented in the US.

“For MLS and NWSL, it clearly makes the most sense,” Matt Drew, who has experience negotiating international soccer rights deals, told ESPN.

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Both of America’s top domestic leagues will negotiate new media deals in the coming years, and have already extensively discussed how to build on the momentum from this summer’s World Cup.

An MLS spokesperson told ESPN that the topic of changing the current hydration break policy has not yet been discussed, but that the league will ‘continually review all aspects of our competition’ as it does each year.

“More broadly, MLS has a long history of creating and testing innovations that improve the game,” the spokesperson added, in a nod to how FIFA has implemented previous changes concerning injuries and time-wasting during substitutions from the league.

Should the MLS embrace the breaks, Strauss suggests that in Europe, Spain’s La Liga would be most likely to follow, as they are focused on the US market.

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France and Italy would also be more likely to take a ‘hard look’ at generating more broadcast revenues, but the financial strength of the Premier League suggests it would be the ‘last place to adopt a change’.

It remains to be seen how competitions across the globe will truly handle the arrival of hydration breaks in soccer, but there is little doubt that it has already created a new dynamic between potential broadcast partners and leagues.

“The hydration break is so contentious that it can be used as a stalking horse to allow other forms of commercialization,” Murray Barnett, a media rights executive based in the UK, told Strauss.

“The threat to do hydration break advertising would encourage people to be more flexible about other commercial integrations.”

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