ITV has announced that the upcoming World Cup will be the most lucrative sports event the broadcaster has ever aired, with executives describing the tournament as a "six-week summer Super Bowl moment" for television advertising. The channel will broadcast 51 of the 104 matches in the men's tournament, which is co-hosted by the US, Mexico, and Canada and has been expanded from 32 to 48 teams.
Record Advertising Revenue
Kelly Williams, managing director of commercial at ITV, stated that the broadcaster's advertising revenues are running approximately 30% higher than those from Euro 2024, when 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.
Cost of Advertising
While ITV does not disclose the cost of individual ads, media industry sources estimate that a 30-second commercial during an England game can cost as much as £300,000. Williams noted that during 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 of the tournament.
"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," Williams said. "They are just unique audiences. You can't get them on streaming services, or social media, or YouTube. It is live and free to air."
Advertiser Interest
The opportunity to reach these audiences has attracted a wide range of advertisers. ITV has so far sold packages to 220 different advertisers, with 70 of them running TV ads in football coverage for the first time. Williams said that about eight advertisers are entirely new to television advertising.
One notable advertiser is Jeremy Clarkson's Hawkstone lager brand, which booked slots after the success of the Hawkstone Farmers' Choir winning Britain's Got Talent last month. The most high-profile ad campaign is Nike's World Cup commercial, which at six minutes will be the longest commercial ever aired on TV in the UK. The ad, featuring superstar footballers, will debut during England's opening match against Croatia and includes 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 rule works on an average basis, allowing ITV to adjust its overall ad allocation to run the full Nike commercial.
Tech and AI Advertisers
Williams noted that a notable trend among advertisers for the tournament is the number of AI and tech companies booking ad slots. In addition to Google, ads will run from Amazon Web Services, Apple, Dell, Microsoft's Copilot, and Meta.
The time difference with North America means that England's first games kick off 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 group matches for other teams are scheduled at less sociable times, either 11pm or 2am.
The BBC holds the rights to air the remaining World Cup matches in the UK.
Broadcaster Setups
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 podcast "The Rest Is Football" from a studio in downtown New York. Lineker left the BBC last May after another row over his social media posts, having been due to host his seventh World Cup.
In April, Lineker remarked that 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 the BBC's studio setup and defended the decision to remain in the UK, stating that "the actual end product that people are getting at home, I don't really think it's that different."
