As the World Cup landed in the U.S. for the first time in three decades, international soccer fans have been acquainting themselves with the distinctly American pleasures of barbecue, highway traffic jams and Texas summers.
But there’s one American tradition that fans of the world’s most popular sport simply cannot tolerate. This summer, World Cup games have introduced commercial breaks smack in the middle of each half.
For the first time in the 96-year history of the World Cup, matches have been interrupted around the 22nd and 67th minutes as a matter of course. Officially, the reason from soccer’s world governing body is that FIFA wants to give the players a “hydration break” in the scorching American summer.
For broadcasters, that has simply turned into another opportunity to jam in more ads, cutting away from the live pictures to commercials for beer and gambling companies.
“Those three minutes interrupt everything,” France’s World Cup-winning manager Didier Deschamps said before the tournament. “We have to adapt. But the broadcasters are happy, right?”
Fans haven’t been quite so understanding. As soon as the matches began on Thursday, fans flooded to social media to express their outrage that the beautiful game was now put on pause so corporations could pitch their products.
“You want to be immersed in this experience, and then you’re immediately reminded that it’s all a cash grab,” documentary filmmaker Randy Wilkins said. “It’s extremely disappointing.”
The idea of “hydration breaks” was first introduced at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil for matches when the temperature rose above 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 Fahrenheit). But this summer, they have become mandatory, regardless of temperature. When the game paused during the first half of the U.S. men’s national team opener on Friday in Los Angeles, the temperature was…71 degrees Fahrenheit.
“I don’t like it,” U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino said. “I only like it when the conditions are extreme, but when the conditions are good, it is unnecessary.”
But much of the entire soccer world sees something else besides player safety at play: corporate greed. Creating a three-minute window in each half of the 104 matches of this World Cup adds up to more than 10 extra hours of advertising time over the course of the tournament.
“They’ve essentially divided the game into quarters,” said John Kosner, a consultant and former ESPN executive, “and made enormously valuable breaks.”
According to one ad buyer, a 30-second spot during early games costs some brands roughly $200,000, but jumps to around $750,000 when the U.S. national team is playing. Fox Sports , which holds the English-language rights to the tournament in the U.S., didn’t capitalize on that value simply by dropping in a brief ad for each pause in the action.
Midway through the very first half of the World Cup, they ran five commercials—following an animation announcing the “Powerade Hydration Break.” In the second half of the opening match, the ads ran so long that when TVs turned back to the game itself, fans had missed precious seconds of action.
“FIFA is always trying to find ways to innovate,” Zac Kenworthy, vice president of production at Fox Sports, said before the tournament. “They’re very intrigued in the American market, the way we do sports here.”
For as long as soccer has existed, there’s been just one problem with shoehorning into the American way of televised sports. Football, basketball and baseball are all shot through with timeouts and stoppages, ends of innings and changes of possession. Soccer, on the other hand, is defined by constant activity: two unbroken 45-minute halves, with no pause for a soda brand or insurance company to chime in. (Even if NBC tried in-game ads when it broadcast the tournament in 1986.)
“As a fan, I don’t love it,” Rob Stone, the lead studio host for Fox Sports’ World Cup coverage, said. “I hope they’re doing it for the right reason, looking out for the players’ well-being.”
Still, fans aren’t all that surprised that ad breaks found their way into the game eventually.
“If this was going to happen anywhere, it was going to happen in the U.S.,” said Mike Frenkel, a 35-year-old Germany fan. “But if one of these ads costs me seeing a goal, that’s a bridge too far.”
Write to Robert O’Connell at robert.oconnell@wsj.com and Suzanne Vranica at Suzanne.Vranica@wsj.com
