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Fox is taking full advantage of the hydration breaks at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Each time the players go to the sideline for water, which happens at the midway point of each half, Fox goes to commercials. And those advertisements are bringing in some serious cash.

Awful Announcing has estimated that Fox will make about $250 million during the World Cup thanks to the hydration break ads.

That's more than half of what they paid for the rights to broadcast the tournament.

This is the math done by Awful Announcing:

We can conservatively say Fox is averaging a price of $300,000 for a 30-second spot, considering the low end of the reported range is for early games. Later in the tournament, one would expect the network to command rates towards the top end of that range, possibly more.Each hydration break is three minutes in length and allows for four 30-second ads based on FIFA’s advertising guidelines, which mandate a 20-second buffer on the front-end and a 30-second buffer on the back-end of each break. (Fox has been inconsistent at best in abiding by these guidelines, but FIFA has said it will not punish the network despite the breaches.)With room for four commercials per hydration break, that amounts to eight available spots per game. Across 104 World Cup matches, that’s 832 potential in-game commercials Fox can sell. Our conservative estimate of $300,000 per spot would rake in $249.6 million from just the commercials sold during hydration breaks for Fox. If that average climbed to $400,000, Fox’s total would climb to $332.8 million.

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Fox has frustrated viewers with these commercials. They had suggested it would be a "hybrid" approach, in which the breaks weren't just full-screen commercials for their entirety, but so far, that's what they've been.

It's also not a choice being made by every broadcaster. The United States' Spanish-language broadcaster, Telemundo, is staying on the game during the breaks.

It's logical why Fox would like these ad spots so much, though. Because it's a short break, viewers likely aren't disappearing from their screen, compared to halftime being able to step away for a bit.

That creates a more captive audience for any ads that may be put on the screen.

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It's a new situation, because FIFA determined that every match of this World Cup would have the hydration breaks, not just ones that exceed the temperatures laid out in the Laws of the Game.

Whether it was the television rightsholders pushing for this, or just them taking advantage, is relatively inconsequential now.

The fact is that the hydration breaks are here, Fox is using them to go to commercial, and it's a financial boon for the network.

More FIFA World Cup news:

Billy Heyen

Billy Heyen is a freelance writer with The Sporting News. He is a 2019 graduate of Syracuse University who spent his senior year following Jim Boeheim's basketball team around the country. His reporting work has also included extensive high school sports coverage at the Sandusky Register and Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. Adventures in sports writing have also led to in-person coverage of the Buffalo Sabres, Cleveland Guardians, U.S. men's national soccer team and a variety of minor league baseball stories. When people ask if he's seen a movie, the answer is usually "No, I was probably watching sports." Even away from sports, his main hobby is running (much slower than any athlete in these pages).

Source: Sporting News