ITV has declared that the upcoming World Cup will be the most lucrative sports event it has ever aired, with executives describing the expanded tournament as a "six-week summer Super Bowl moment" for TV advertising. The broadcaster is airing 51 of the 104 matches in the men's tournament, co-hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada, which has been expanded from 32 to 48 teams for the first time.
Record Advertising Revenues
Kelly Williams, ITV's managing director of commercial, told the Guardian that the broadcaster's advertising revenues for the tournament are running approximately 30% higher than those for Euro 2024, the last major football event in which England reached the final. "This will be our most commercially successful tournament ever," Williams said. "It is not just one game but six weeks of really big TV audiences. It is effectively our six-week summer Super Bowl moment."
ITV began selling commercial packages for the World Cup last autumn, with Google securing the headline sponsorship to promote its Gemini and Pixel products. However, the broadcaster is holding back prime advertising slots around games later in the tournament, which can command hefty premiums if England progresses to the later stages. While ITV does not disclose the cost of individual ads, media industry sources estimate that a 30-second commercial during an England match can cost as much as £300,000.
Unique Audience Appeal
Williams noted that at the last World Cup, which featured 64 matches, a typical game averaged 6 million viewers, while England matches peaked at 20-25 million depending on the stage. "In a world where viewing habits have changed and audiences have fragmented, I think these kinds of shared cultural moments are more important and valued by advertisers," he said. "They are just unique audiences. You can't get them on streaming services, social media, or YouTube. It is live and free-to-air."
The opportunity to reach these audiences has been embraced by advertisers. ITV has so far sold packages to 220 different advertisers, 70 of which are running TV ads in football coverage for the first time. Williams said about eight advertisers are completely new to TV advertising, including Jeremy Clarkson's Hawkstone lager brand, which booked slots after the huge media coverage generated by the Hawkstone Farmers' Choir winning Britain's Got Talent last month.
Notable Ad Campaigns
The most high-profile ad campaign is Nike's World Cup TV ad, which at six minutes will be the longest commercial ever aired on television. The ad features superstar footballers and will air for the first time during England's opening match against Croatia, with appearances from Cole Palmer, who did not make the squad. The media regulator Ofcom limits the number of minutes of ads a broadcaster can air per hour, but this works on an average, allowing ITV to flex its overall minutage to run the full Nike commercial.
Williams added that one thing that "stood out" among the range of advertisers was the number of artificial intelligence and technology companies booking ad slots. Alongside Google, ads will run from Amazon Web Services, Apple, Dell, Microsoft's Copilot, and Meta.
Time Zone Advantage
The time difference with North America means that kick-off times for England's first games are at 9pm or 10pm UK time, a potentially more attractive time for advertisers compared to the afternoon slots of tournaments held in Europe. However, while ITV expects a boost from audiences watching Scotland's progress, the times of group matches are much more unsociable, at either 11pm or 2am.
The BBC holds the rights to air the remaining World Cup matches in the UK. ITV has set up a glitzy studio in Brooklyn with views of the Manhattan skyline, while the BBC has opted to broadcast from its studios in Salford, Manchester. Former lead BBC football presenter Gary Lineker has signed a reported £14 million deal with Netflix to stream daily versions of his popular podcast "The Rest Is Football" from a studio in downtown New York. Lineker left the BBC last May after another row about his social media posts, having been due to host his seventh World Cup. In April, he said he would have been "in Salford in a green box" instead of "overlooking Times Square with lots of great guests." On Tuesday, Alex Kay-Jelski, the director of BBC Sport, unveiled its studio set-up and defended the decision to be based in the UK, saying, "The actual end product that people are getting at home, I don't really think it's that different."
