Where Data Tells the Story
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The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the world’s single largest television advertising event.
Billions of people are watching matches on broadcast platforms. Rights holders sold premium inventory at record rates.
However, the media channel through which people are watching the tournament the most (TV) isn’t the one most marketers think pays off for advertising.
The infographic above is based on a 2025 survey of marketers by WARC.
They were asked about their sentiment on where they expect more investment across 17 media channels next year.
Net Sentiment equals the percentage of respondents who expect investment to increase minus the percentage of respondents who expect investment to decrease.
Online video leads all media channels in net investment sentiment, at +65%. TV has a net investment sentiment of -20%.
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Four minutes and 20 seconds per match. Seven hours, 30 minutes, and 40 seconds across the entire 2026 tournament.
That is the additional advertising inventory created by mandatory hydration breaks (available to commercial broadcasters in markets where the BBC and ITV are not showing the games).
Viewers on those services see punditry and player interviews. Viewers everywhere else see advertising.
That inventory does not flow into the channels marketing professionals are most negative about.
It flows into online video (pre-rolls, mid-rolls, and branded content in streaming environments), which carries the highest positive sentiment of any channel in the dataset at +65%.
The World Cup’s additional advertising time is landing in exactly the channel the industry is most enthusiastic about, at exactly the moment it is pulling back from the broadcast medium that carries the matches.
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