As the fifth day of World Cup competition draws to a close, Fox’s hydration break strategy has become abundantly clear. Despite reports of a “hybrid approach” that would supposedly see the network show the field and players during at least some hydration breaks, Fox has instead opted to go to full-screen advertisements during each and every mid-half stoppage throughout the World Cup.
Expect that to remain consistent throughout the rest of this World Cup. Per the latest report from Sports Business Journal regarding the breaks in play, Fox’s current approach will “continue,” though a picture-and-picture break “could still happen” if producers decide in real-time that such an approach is necessary.
So far, that hasn’t been the case. Even during the second-half hydration break of Monday’s thrilling match between Spain and Cabo Verde, with the small African nation 20 minutes away from accomplishing the unthinkable and Spain’s most important player, Lamine Yamal, preparing to be subbed on during the stoppage, Fox opted to cut to a full ad break. It’s difficult to imagine a situation more tailored for the elusive picture-in-picture break than that, but the network’s strategy remained the same as every other hydration break to that point.
Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journalreported Fox was selling 30-second ad spots during these hydration breaks at roughly $200,000 for early-round games, and around $750,000 for games featuring the U.S. Men’s National Team. With those figures, it’s quite easy to estimate how much Fox stands to make off of hydration break ads alone.
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.
You can see why Fox would be eager to sell this ad inventory, viewer preferences be damned.
For context, Fox is paying a reported $485 million for broadcast rights to this World Cup. Revenue generated from hydration break ads will cover at least half of that fee, and potentially much more.
Is that enough reason to justify the decision? Well, it probably depends whether or not you’re a Fox shareholder. One can hardly blame a media company like Fox, which is facing the headwinds of cord-cutting and ever-increasing sports rights fees squeezing its bottom line, for taking advantage of a nine-figure revenue windfall. But the way the network has gone about it has been maximalist in every sense of the word.
There’s a middle ground between selling 832 ads and selling no ads at all. However, Fox has thrown caution to the wind and is deciding to eek every possible penny out of this newfound ad inventory. That middle ground between 832 and zero is likely what fans anticipated after seeing reports of the “hybrid approach” prior to the tournament, but no such approach has materialized.
Just like it’s hard to blame Fox for trying to make a buck, it’s hard to blame fans for complaining about how intrusive the ads are, particularly when a network like Telemundo has opted against airing any full-screen ads during hydration breaks.
In any case, we’ll wait and see if Fox will ever decide to do anything besides a full-screen ad break during these stoppages in play, or if reports of such possibilities are overly optimistic.
The post Fox likely making upwards of $250M on hydration break ads during World Cup appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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