Yet another Hacker News

9 Ads per Minute: FIFA Cup 26 – "the price of the beautiful game"

128 points KellyCriterion 3 hours ago 164 comments

KellyCriterion 3 hours ago | parent

- 9 ads per minute

- approx. 1 logo per each 6,7 seconds

lostlogin 2 hours ago | parent

How can it be that little? Showing any one player would get you more than 1 advert on screen the whole time.

chistev 3 hours ago | parent

And it seems the "hydration break" has been adopted by La Liga.

serial_dev 3 hours ago | parent

It's just an ad break, and now that it has been normalized, probably everyone will do it. They should just say directly we have quarters from now on because we want to show you more ads, the most annoying part is this gaslighting, pretending it is for hydration.

bdavbdav 3 hours ago | parent

Yep. US World Cup ruined it for the rest of us :(

stockresearcher 2 hours ago | parent

Are you going to be leading the campaign to get your national FA to return all of the money it received from the highest-revenue-sharing-ever US World Cup?

windward 2 hours ago | parent

Football fans have shown they're quite eager to tell Infantino where to stick his revenue sharing.

watwut 2 hours ago | parent

It earned the most money, but was it the most sharing? The hosting cities were taken advantage of and clubs are in fact rebelling against fifa now.

kryptiskt 2 hours ago | parent

Sweden cleared $2.5M in profit from their participation, about the same as the previous edition, all the increase was eaten up by the US taxing the teams and higher costs. That's not nearly enough money to sell out for.

rbarrosoPT 2 hours ago | parent

Each year, I watch less and less football. In Portugal you have to subscribe 2 or 3 streaming platforms if want to follow the Portuguese League, the Champions League, and eventually other country leagues (like Premier League and La Liga).

Now, we see huge panels (double the height) for ads in stadiums which become very intrusive when watching on TV (20–30% of the screen ends up being used for ads). Added the hydratation->ADs breaks, and increased World Cup tickets insanely.

Football used to be for everyone, now they're are killing it for almost everyone.

zimpenfish 2 hours ago | parent

> In Portugal you have to subscribe 2 or 3 streaming platforms

Same in the UK (Sky for EPL+EFL Cup, HBO for EPL+UCL, Amazon Prime for Christmas EPL + occasional cup games) + a TV licence (for the occasional cup game / tournaments.)

If you don't pay for anything, you can watch about 10? cup games a season on ITV. Or go to a pub, obviously (but then you'll be forced to buy drinks.)

You can usually listen to a bunch of games per week via BBC Radio (I think it requires a TV licence if you use streaming but you can still get 5Live on AM radio AFAIK) and TalkSport (also on AM radio.)

VulgarExigency 2 hours ago | parent

My solution for this is to just subscribe to an entirely legitimate IPTV service which costs about as much for a year as one month of Sport TV costs.

H4cks0r1337 3 hours ago | parent

Yes, the important hydration break. Because players didn't have ample time to drink something up until now before free kicks, corner kicks etc and during VAR checks every ~ 10 minutes. Glad I stopped watching more than 10 years ago.

itopaloglu83 1 hour ago | parent

Average play time is around 55 minutes in La Liga, so there’s around 35 minutes of wasted time anyway.

dzonga 2 hours ago | parent

and the Italian league.

honestly I think it's not a bad move - as it allows for tactical flexibility.

lbreakjai 2 hours ago | parent

A break to drink water is not a new thing in La Liag. It's however only implemented when the temperature reaches a certain threshold (I think 30 degrees but I may be wrong), which I think makes sense and is acceptable.

The World Cup turned it into a farce by making it mandatory even during a rainy 19 degrees weather, or inside climate controlled stadiums.

It's still close to 40 degrees in Sevilla these days.

originalvichy 2 hours ago | parent

It was only mandatory so that teams wouldn’t feel like they were disadvantaged if a rival got breaks during games that crossed a set temperature limit and they did not. League game fixtures are so random that this would not be an advantage, but for a short cup tournament like this it could be a big tactical/performance advantage, especially in the knockout phase.

tremon 2 hours ago | parent

That was merely the excuse given. Teams are already hugely disadvantaged by having to play in 30+°C when a rival gets to play in 20°C instead. Giving the team playing in better conditions a commercial break as well only adds to that unfairness.

lbreakjai 2 hours ago | parent

Yes that was the reason put forward, which is absolutely ridiculous if you think about it.

Some teams within the same group had to travel far more than others. Some played at noon in a California stadium shaped like a oven while others played later in cooler climates or in climate controlled stadiums. Some games had to be interrupted because of thunderstorms.

Yet the only measure they took for "fairness" happened to be the one that incidentally allowed them to make more money. Let's be honest for a second, a three minutes break amounts to a somewhat lengthy VAR or offside check, a slow corner kick, or an injured player getting escorted off the field.

If anything, it makes it _more_ unfair to make it mandatory everywhere. It's not an advantage, it's supposed to make up for a particularly hot/humid weather. Now your next opponent will have had the benefit of an extra 6 minutes break, without the disadvantage of having exerted themselves in a very hot weather.

Any talk of fairness when out of the window when FIFA decided to put their thumb on the scale and rescind Balogun's red card anyway.

baggachipz 42 minutes ago | parent

The genie is out of the bottle. All football leagues will have it sooner or later. Then there's one additional break. Then another....

Muhammad523 3 hours ago | parent

I think people simply ignore the banners and logos all around so its not that much of a problem

xnorswap 3 hours ago | parent

They clearly don't, otherwise it wouldn't generate so much advertising revenue.

onion2k 3 hours ago | parent

That assumes advertisers are correctly measuring the impact of their ads. They could just be wrong.

xeyownt 3 hours ago | parent

If you invest millions, you make sure that being wrong is a very tiny probability.

rf15 3 hours ago | parent

And as a provider of advertisement surfaces you have every incentive to oversell the reach of your surfaces.

gwd 3 hours ago | parent

That doesn't match the behavior I've observed from large corporations.

LPisGood 3 hours ago | parent

VC firms batting at such a small rate.

smallmancontrov 3 hours ago | parent

"I am convinced that about one-half the money I spend for advertising is wasted, but I have never been able to decide which half."

chrismorgan 1 hour ago | parent

I would be astonished to find a business wasting only half of its advertising spend.

DaiPlusPlus 3 hours ago | parent

That's the ideal, yes.

But the problem with marketing and advertising is that it's impossible to know if a campaign will be a hit - a flop - or the butt of jokes from an entire generation (e.g. New Coke, Jaguar 2025; or it may very well just work despite all the industry naysayers like Apple's translucent plastic look from 1998 - I/we felt no-one would ever buy an overpriced and non-expandable PC that looked like a kid's toy, or a loo-seat laptop.

...of course, what actually happens is the strongest personalities in the C-suite eschew what their MBA course taught them about trusting the experts below them in the org chart; instead they champion their own personal pet ideas, no matter how much predictable damage they'll do to the company's share-price, because they couldn't possibly be wrong; he is the CTO, after-all; very smart!

someguynamedq 1 hour ago | parent

The irony is that these "flops" are still making these brands live rent free in your head.

NeutralCrane 2 hours ago | parent

Absolutely not.

Early in my career I worked for a pharmaceutical giant as a statistician. One of the things we would work on was trying to determine how much the various advertising efforts the company did actually moved the needle. Every year was the same miserable experience. The company would spend millions and millions of dollars in various advertising channels. We would attempt to determine how effective it was, but the wayin which they advertised and the way we collected data made it very difficult to generate any kind of insight at all. We would make recommendations as to how to adjust execution moving forward to ensure we could reliably determine how much value we were getting out of these campaigns, all of which would be ignored. They would massage our findings to tell whatever story they needed and would do the same thing the next year.

The marketing division is its own organization, with their own incentives that don’t necessarily align with the broader company’s incentives. They also were heavily addicted to relying on external analytical consultants who could pump out all the slide decks and pie charts they wanted, which would inevitably show that the marketing was not only effective, but should be invested in more the following year.

someguynamedq 1 hour ago | parent

Pharmaceuticals is an extremely specific example here. Anyone can buy a Coke.

xnorswap 3 hours ago | parent

Yes, it could be a mass-delusion drive ad-spend, but I think you're vastly underestimating how much these logos actually go in to "brand recognition".

Next time you walk into your local electronics retailer and look at TVs, you might see a Samsung, LG, HiSense.

Chances are, if not for massive amounts spent on advertising sports, you'd overlook some of these brands in favour of the ones you recognise.

It won't be a conscious, "I saw this during the north London derby so I'll buy it", but subconscious name recognition will have a huge impact on willingness to buy.

mitxela 2 hours ago | parent

Right, you won't buy a GHTESKJVFII even if it happens to be the best product

amanaplanacanal 2 hours ago | parent

Half the products on Amazon have names like that.

iamacyborg 2 hours ago | parent

And you’re mostly only seeing them because they’re paying Amazon to be promoted in listings.

mitxela 59 minutes ago | parent

One of them could actually be the best product, and you wouldn't even know.

mrweasel 3 hours ago | parent

The problem is that you have no idea if those ads are working, not really.

Do I go to McDonalds because I saw an ad, or because it 3 minutes away and the kid wants nuggets? Do I shop at my local supermarket because they buy every third ad on YouTube, or because it's the closest? There are a ton of details that influence our daily choices, and I'm not suggesting that ads aren't one of them, but I'm starting to doubt that it's the defining one. When I look at what I buy it's: availability, cost, and specification. There's not a hold lot advertising can do about any of those three.

If we could truly measure which ads works and which doesn't the entire ad based economy would crash over night.

devsda 2 hours ago | parent

Ads don't have to be the primary deciding factor but it does make the rest of the process in the sales pipeline easy.

Whether we realize or not subconsciously our minds will associate the product and ad. When that association is reinforced by the salesman, a strategic placement on the shelf, or discount offers it is easier to convert it to sale.

someguynamedq 2 hours ago | parent

This is an entire industry. It's profitable. It works. The ad based economy exists because they do truly measure which ads work and know exactly how much money it makes them.

kibwen 39 minutes ago | parent

"They" being the companies that sell advertisements and the marketing departments whose budgets are contingent on the fiction that advertisements create value, yes.

DaiPlusPlus 3 hours ago | parent

On the contrary: it's because people ignore them so much that motivates those very same brands to constantly push harder, and more obnoxiously, each time major sporting events are on.

Like, what-on-earth was Visa thinking when their sponsorship of the Olympics had all the food-vendors and merch sellers boasting how they were "Proud" to decline payments from customers unless they're using Visa-networked cards[1] - which demonstrates they just can't exercise restraint.

[1]: https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2012/07... - Visa's official slogan really was “We are proud to accept only Visa.”

someguynamedq 2 hours ago | parent

You think they advertise more because it's not profitable?

inexcf 2 hours ago | parent

And homeopathy works because people pay for it.

someguynamedq 1 hour ago | parent

Homeopathy works as a business because of marketing :)

inexcf 1 hour ago | parent

I doubt it is brand recognition and more an abstract kind of marketing you mean. Esoteric word of mouth.

dude250711 3 hours ago | parent

Meta/Snap should make AR-glasses that block out ads.

If only they were not glorified ad companies themselves...

slig 2 hours ago | parent

Well, they can block their competitors ads...

EDEdDNEdDYFaN 3 hours ago | parent

I am sure you are aware that on a subconscious level the ads have an impact on you, even if you think you are actively “ignoring” them

rjknight 3 hours ago | parent

The gambling ads have a conscious effect for me: I think “what a terrible world this portrays, I’m glad I don’t gamble”. For me, being reminded of gambling is just a reminder of the fact that I don’t like gambling. The same is true of some other ads too, they mostly serve to remind me that I define my personality in opposition to these things.

However, I have to presume that the effect is different for at least some other people.

someguynamedq 1 hour ago | parent

The gambling ads aren't for you, they're to make the gambling addicts fall off the wagon

inexcf 2 hours ago | parent

I specifically avoid products i see ads for, cause the product can't be that great if it needs obnoxious advertisements, so the effect is more than subconscious. Now, i don't see many ads cause i block all of them where i can and roadside advertisements are not allowed here in Germany, but even if i was, i am of the opinion that the effect of this subliminal manipulation is severely overstated by the people selling ad space. I think the idea that i would buy something just because a company writes their name everywhere is ridiculous and as far as i know studies show that the effect on buying decisions is basically not measurable. I think the entire value in advertisements is just more people in general knowing of a brand.

dingaling 51 minutes ago | parent

Quick, name three tyre brands. No, not those ones - ones for which you've never seen an ad

bdavbdav 3 hours ago | parent

Not at all true. There’s a whole industry around measuring this (e.g. https://www.edo.com). A massive amount of money is spent on advertising for large companies. McD spend ballpark $3bn across the parent and franchisees, they want to make sure they get value.

bayindirh 3 hours ago | parent

The worst part is, the value they get (monies) is not the same value you get (worse health all over).

totetsu 2 hours ago | parent

You can ignore something actively but you are a still picking up on the message of it’s ubiquitousness. I think we have all had the experience of considering buying a {redacted} or something sometime after seeing and ignoring an add for one.

wateralien 3 hours ago | parent

People don't ignore anything. Everything is absorbed one way or another.

brendanfinan 3 hours ago | parent

For many this was their first opportunity to invest in binary event contracts, so this is a win for financial liferacy

ricardobeat 3 hours ago | parent

*literacy?

this is funny on multiple levels.

serial_dev 3 hours ago | parent

I'm actually surprised it's only that many ads? How can people even take a screenshot of the screen without a bunch of ads on it? You can't even take a look at a player, their jersey has basically ads on it, the ball, the shoes, the names of stadiums... Or do they not count the adidas/nike/reebok logos?

tremon 3 hours ago | parent

> The analysis counted advertising built into the match footage (e.g. on the hoardings [sic?]), rather than commercials shown during advertising breaks.

invalidusernam3 2 hours ago | parent

Hoardings is UK English (so... English) for the advertising boards around a football pitch

pluc 2 hours ago | parent

The jersey thing is completely insane to me. I'm from North America where jerseys are largely NBA, NHL and MLB. No ads (although, NHL has started). But the euro jersey has the biggest ad dead fucking center.

I understand the concept that the kit colours is what identifies the team, but still, I can't justify wearing a giant advertisement. If you gave it to me, I'd refuse it. Fuck you, pay me.

aczerepinski 2 hours ago | parent

NBA and MLB both have ads on the jersey (Nike and an additional per-team sponsor)

tialaramex 2 hours ago | parent

But they are being paid, they're paid a tremendous amount of money, and advertisements are where the money comes from.

pluc 2 hours ago | parent

I understand they're being paid to wear their sponsors logo. I am not.

rationalist 2 hours ago | parent

Yep. Every logo that is sewn onto my clothes, I remove with a razorblade before I wear them.

AnimalMuppet 1 hour ago | parent

Hah! Someone else who does that!

(Or at least I did, for a couple decades...)

tialaramex 1 hour ago | parent

For sports shirts the advertising is literally part of the shirt design, if you remove all adverts with a razorblade now you'd wasted a lot of money on a shirt with huge holes in it.

A friend of mine used to do this with products that self-advertise when he was younger (I notice his Tilley hat is unmolested, presumably he had now stopped), but it doesn't really make sense on say a reproduction football kit.

baggachipz 44 minutes ago | parent

That's pretty extreme. I just buy stuff that is very minimalist with the logo. A small "swoosh" doesn't really bother me.

ishjoh 33 minutes ago | parent

I reached a certain point and decided that a plain single color or striped cotton tshirt from kohls looks and feels as good as any plain single color cotton shirt that might have a swoosh on it. Bonus the no logo version is usually cheaper as well.

iamacyborg 2 hours ago | parent

He’s referring to jerseys sold to fans, not those worn by the athletes.

dwedge 2 hours ago | parent

Not sure if there's push back or something behind this but a lot of premiership teams this season in the UK have a second kit where the sponsor is either missing or the same colour as the shirt so barely visible. Examples: https://www.safcstore.com/en/c-18416 https://www.brightonandhovealbion.com/media-article/125th-an...

pluc 2 hours ago | parent

The same goes for international matches, no ads on jerseys.

expedition32 2 hours ago | parent

Teams get paid to wear Nike or Adidas.

It led to the hilarious situation were they have to wear pink shoes so that the audience looks at them.

pluc 2 hours ago | parent

The best example is Jordan's 1992 Olympic cover-up

https://boardroom.tv/michael-jordan-olympic-jacket-nike-reeb...

iamacyborg 2 hours ago | parent

Pink boots is because of the strong contrast against the green grass, no?

klelatti 1 hour ago | parent

Watched Brighton beat Arsenal on the TV over the weekend and had no idea they had the sponsor’s name on their Jersey at all!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/live/c65ym9ml19d0t

o10449366 2 hours ago | parent

What? Lakers are literally sponsored by Wish.

pluc 2 hours ago | parent

Yeah I don't watch basketball or baseball or football so I don't know. Those are US leagues for US sports for US people, with one team to pretend it isn't.

basisword 1 hour ago | parent

Why did you act like you did know in your original comment then?

pluc 1 hour ago | parent

I didn't

parthdesai 51 minutes ago | parent

> I'm from North America where jerseys are largely NBA, NHL and MLB. No ads (although, NHL has started). But the euro jersey has the biggest ad dead fucking center.

This is what you said word for word.

etcetcetcetceta 2 hours ago | parent

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c77kvx575npo

It's common even at a local grassroots level where local businesses will feature on the kits.

TylerE 2 hours ago | parent

NBA has had ads on jerseys since the 2017 season.

MLB since 2023.

basisword 1 hour ago | parent

All of those sports have about 2 hours of advertising breaks during the game. Football has one, at half time, and that also includes some analysis.

parthdesai 54 minutes ago | parent

As someone who didn't grow up in NA, i don't understand this attitude. At least in soccer (football), we don't have to sit and watch ads and waste our time (barring the NA world cup). I know a league game will take ~2 hours to complete with a 15 minute half time break. I can allocate that time and then move on with my life. I much rather have that than having to sit through ads that end up taking more time than actual playtime! NBA used to have a thing called TV timeouts. But hey you don't get ads on the jersey

rob74 3 hours ago | parent

> Our findings reveal the sheer scale of branding embedded throughout tournament broadcasts, making exposure to unhealthy food, alcohol and gambling brands both omnipresent and unavoidable for viewers.

Do we really need an academic study to tell us that yes, there were ads on the sides of the football pitch at the World Cup, and that FIFA's choice of sponsors is questionable (but hey, questionable sponsors pay better than less questionable ones)?

probably_wrong 2 hours ago | parent

To quote one of my teachers, "you may read the Constitution and think it's all obvious, that it's like writing a law that says people need air to live. The problem is, if you don't explicitly write it down someone may actually try to steal the air".

I didn't need someone to tell me that FIFA is full of ads. But studies like this provide a precise, measurable target to work with.

mitxela 2 hours ago | parent

also in the thread about OONI censorship measuring program people said they don't need a study to know China censors the internet

boesboes 3 hours ago | parent

Marketing, the great value siphon. Marketing adds NOTHING of value of the world.

adrianN 3 hours ago | parent

Product discoverability has some value, but marketing is largely a zero sum game.

pluc 2 hours ago | parent

Marketing is the art of fucking with discoverability so that your shit gets discovered instead of what is relevant.

strictnein 59 minutes ago | parent

You are familiar with Nike and Adidas. I want to start a shoe brand that makes shoes that would coincidentally be perfectly suited for your needs (whatever sport, activity, etc you enjoy). How do I get you to notice them?

pluc 32 minutes ago | parent

You make it relevant instead of merely making it present.

mordae 2 hours ago | parent

Discoverability is trivially solvable by dedicating journalists to products. There are already events the companies use to present their products, frequented by journalists who then proceed to write periodicals with new product categories, benchmarks and comparisons.

Those do get gamed and might cheat since they'd get kickbacks, but that should result in a reputation loss as other journalists point it out. There are also various cooperative models that work here well as members can just vote kickback-taking staff out.

People used to actually subscribe to magazines (and some still do) in areas they are interested in. And they still go and visit the shops to see if anything interesting pops up and there is word of mouth.

So I believe discoverability is not really a problem. The fact is that polished advertisements take up bandwidth that would be more productively utilized by a benchmark comparison chart with a commentary on differentiators. People would get more performant and/or better fitting products and services and the overall productivity and happiness would increase.

iamacyborg 2 hours ago | parent

What you are talking about is marketing and advertising. You’re not solving anything.

someguynamedq 2 hours ago | parent

Hedonistic treadmill says there is little to no value in product discoverability. Marketing is usually creating a new feeling of need, not servicing an authentic existing one.

snemvalts 2 hours ago | parent

The sport wouldn't be as popular or have as much funding. The reason football is where it is because of marketing.

This can be extended to all other sports. A sport needs to be easy to follow and easy to advertise with to get funding. Being able to practice it cheaply on a grass-roots level helps.

rationalist 2 hours ago | parent

> The sport wouldn't be as popular or have as much funding.

The sport, or the franchise?

voidUpdate 2 hours ago | parent

Would less football be a bad thing? It's the only sport I know where the governing body have to advise the police on how to deal with fan violence, such as "please don't use tear gas on them"

latexr 1 hour ago | parent

> The sport wouldn't be as popular or have as much funding.

And that’s bad because… I’m really asking. What’s the good thing about having millionaires running around a field passing a ball to each other, while billionaires are raking in even more cash by manipulating you with adverts? Not to mention all the other issues with the industry (John Oliver has multiple episodes on FIFA).

If the sport wouldn’t be as popular without marketing, maybe it isn’t that interesting to being with.

strictnein 1 hour ago | parent

> And that’s bad because… I’m really asking

I mean, you're not really, considering everything that follows that statement.

The money in sports allows for people to focus on it and perform at the highest levels possible and compete against others who also have this same focus. Advertising is what allows for this to happen.

People, in general, enjoy seeing athletes do things that most normal people could not achieve. Watching the Tour de France, reading about ultramarathons, etc is enjoyable. The same thing is true with musicians, actors, artists, etc. I may not be interested in, say, eight string guitars, but I will still find it fascinating to see someone who has mastered the instrument.

The fact that these athletes are paid so well is a good thing. They are getting a significant share of the revenue they generate, at least in American sports where the revenue is more or less split evenly with the teams. That was not the case decades ago.

latexr 50 minutes ago | parent

> I mean, you're not really, considering everything that follows that statement.

I am. Everything that follows is merely the negatives I see to provide context as to why I’m asking. It’s there so you can understand my point of view and rebut it. If we don’t know each other’s views, we can’t convince each other.

> The money in sports allows for people to focus on it and perform at the highest levels possible and compete against others who also have this same focus. Advertising is what allows for this to happen.

And my point is that I don’t think the bad of the latter outweighs the good of the former.

> The fact that these athletes are paid so well is a good thing.

That they are paid well, sure. That they are paid so well, I’m not convinced. Either way, the amount of money the industry moves (and how it is spent and acquired) is more problematic than the money individual athletes get.

another-dave 47 minutes ago | parent

Erling Haaland gets half a million a week. His contract is worth £260m.

These guys take the money because it's on offer to them, and fair play to them.

But I don't think they'd decide not to play football and go off to do something else if he were to "only" get, say £5.2m over 10 years instead (£10,500 per week).

another-dave 56 minutes ago | parent

> The sport wouldn't be as popular or have as much funding. The reason football is where it is because of marketing.

wouldn't have as much funding, sure, but football was massively popular long before they started putting logos on shirts & hoardings.

If there was less money involved in football, then the likes of the free-to-air stations would be in a better position to compete to show more matches, too

hnisjafx40 3 hours ago | parent

Worked on the ad insertion side for a league feed once, and hydration breaks exist because they're the only reliably schedulable stop in a 45 minute half.

wateralien 3 hours ago | parent

It's not only the World Cup, it's everything, everywhere, all the time. We are drowning in marketing messages. It's gross.

gumby 2 hours ago | parent

AR glasses with ad blocking would be a must-buy for me…though how would I learn about it?

Seems like a good feature for AirPods too, though the new CEO Ternus seems committed to the opposite.

elar_verole 35 minutes ago | parent

Replace all ads with beautiful classic paintings, get closer to see info about (title, artist, year)...

There's something to it

dylan604 34 minutes ago | parent

I have no faith in humanity, especially those involved in tech, to make this. If they did, they'd block real life marketing only so it could be used to replace with ads bought directly with the AR maker.

thinkingtoilet 2 hours ago | parent

At least soccer has continuous play. Watching American football is unbearable.

officialchicken 2 hours ago | parent

And then the US advertisers came up with "hydration breaks".

itopaloglu83 1 hour ago | parent

How long do you think it’s going to take until another broadcaster starts adding ads during injury time, or maybe other 3-5 second ads between shots?

dylan604 31 minutes ago | parent

I'm shocked they don't just scale the picture down to do side by side style commercials at the same time regardless of what was occurring during play. They do this in auto racing events. There's no need to wait for specific times and can keep with their regularly spacing of breaks.

drstewart 1 hour ago | parent

And then the Swiss FIFA accepted the "hydration breaks".

Swiss- / European-style capitalism has ruined football.

strictnein 1 hour ago | parent

Watching adults roll around on the ground like they just had a limb ripped from their body because someone came within two feet of them is unbearable. It's the most embarrassing thing in sports, but at least the clock keeps going, I guess.

dylan604 28 minutes ago | parent

I'm not saying there's not instances of shithousery, but if you've never had a cleat scrape down the back of your calf or have a cleat stomp on the top of your foot, that shit hurts man. Yeah, it goes away, but the immediate pain is intense and is completely justifiable to to clutch at it. However, that can absolutely be done without theatrics

BLKNSLVR 21 minutes ago | parent

The 1% of times that's actually the case.

The other 99% it's "men" acting like 3 year old first born children who had a toy taken away from them.

It's a beautiful sport, ruined.

sojournerc 20 minutes ago | parent

My solution: if play has to stop because you're rolling around, you are clearly injured and must be substituted. This would fix a lot of the fakery I imagine.

dylan604 7 minutes ago | parent

Again, sounds like someone that has not actually played. There are times where you just need a damn minute. The rule saying that if you require having someone come look at you on the field means you must spend at least one minute on the touchline before being allowed back on is fine. The ref accounts for that time of stopped play to extend play in what is known as stoppage time. There are plenty of times where the player is not actually looking to stop the play, and the ref doesn't stop play. There's other times where you actually need the magic spray. Of course, there are times where your team just needs a break in play to regroup.

ricardobayes 32 minutes ago | parent

I'm the opposite - maybe because I grew up watching "soccer", I find American football much more exotic and insteresting. Lately I'm discovering the nuances of baseball, what a game!

BLKNSLVR 25 minutes ago | parent

The paperclip maximizer was some other dimension, we got the advertising maximizer.

bdcravens 18 minutes ago | parent

Yes, but FIFA's attempt to control every aspect of it was suffocating. I've never seen an event where stadiums had to change their name for an event. (Since the companies that paid for those naming rights hadn't paid FIFA)

gps372 3 hours ago | parent

Most comments may have ignored this so far, but this is an interesting AI based research.

At the end of the article is this excerpt

>> Results from this research were generated using an AI computer vision model developed by the research team on Bristol’s Isambard-AI, the UK’s most powerful AI supercomputer. Isambard-AI powered the analysis of 172.6 hours of live match footage from all 104 games played between 11 June and 19 July 2026.

So, basically now merchandizers, auditors, compliance monitors, etc. have a tool using which they can quantify whether broadcaster complied with contractual requirements of showing their ads/merch/logos as per contract. And if they missed, then they can quantify the delta - to sue the broadcaster for the balance as well.

Also, it can enable many countries, where certain content is not allowed, then this tool can simply give them data points without having to employ someone, or have someone review the output of the AI tooling.

thevinter 2 hours ago | parent

I'm sure this was already easily doable for years by using plain and boring computer vision

OccamsMirror 2 hours ago | parent

You probably don't even need vision. The audio on adverts is noticeably different.

vasco 2 hours ago | parent

There's no audio on the adverts in question.

> The analysis counted advertising built into the match footage (e.g. on the hoardings), rather than commercials shown during advertising breaks

gps372 2 hours ago | parent

Plain and boring computer vision would have still required a team who would identify frames to sample before processing, and then annotate, generalize and classify the data.

Not an expert on this but I don't think same kind of manual effort is required anymore.

GuB-42 2 hours ago | parent

It was easily doable for even more years using plain and boring MK1 eyeballs and a stopwatch.

If you are spending millions on ads, you can pay a couple of guys to watch TV and take notes.

mapt 1 hour ago | parent

For the World Cup, this was always easy.

It was not easy for your local triple A baseball game being streamed to 500 viewers. This approach scales down.

jcoder 50 minutes ago | parent

Hours of bleeding-edge CV analysis sounds pretty expensive for a triple-A game streamed to 500 pairs of eyeballs. They’ll be using the pen & paper approach, too.

ricardobeat 41 minutes ago | parent

Not at scale - a thousand games automatically scored: easy, just feed in the new video files. A thousand workers for individual matches across the country and different channels: absolutely not.

Not to mention human accuracy will likely be way, way worse, no human being will maintain their attention counting ads at five second intervals for even ten minutes, almost two hours is unthinkable.

saintmaxi 1 hour ago | parent

I worked for a company in 2020 that did ad analysis with computer vision - specifically in sports, quantifying value for sponsors based on exposure on team socials (accounting for logo size, positioning, etc in photos + videos) - I was a humble annotator https://www.blinkfire.com

dylan604 35 minutes ago | parent

Since people have bought air time on a broadcast, people have done this very thing to ensure their ad ran. They also notice other analytics like what other ads ran around it and what the content of the program was when it ran. Can't run an ad selling a new car when the scene just before the break was a brutal car wreck or something.

Eventually, people buying ad time on TV stations could request an air check and receive a VHS tape showing a bit of the programming before/after the ad pod your ad ran. Particularly useful when buying ad time on local stations out of the market where you lived.

brookst 2 hours ago | parent

This is also being done in retail, where manufacturers and/or distributors pay for preferred placement (end caps, eye level, etc), but how do you check that e.g. Safeway is really doing that across a couple of thousand stores?

You hire minimum wage people to walk around stores with cameras. This was actually done with notepads occasionally, but so much less expensive tondo with AI.

gps372 1 hour ago | parent

True, in-store planogram compliance and floor-plan compliance have got in focus again. It never lost the focus to be honest, just that now there is an expectation to do it while ensuring nothing fall through the cracks.

But there is a much more stringent privacy requirement here since customers walking in those stores haven't really signed up for this analysis. Hence, difficult to just setup the camera and take continuous data for analysis.

brookst 1 hour ago | parent

Interesting on the privacy angle. I’m not sure anyone is really caring about that; there are lots of companies offering automated compliance services. I’m not super close to that industry but close enough that I’ve heard the pitches, and even the “no expectation of privacy in public” CYA has never come up.

What’s going to be fun are robotic stockers, racing to ensure compliance when a person/bot flagged as an auditor is in the store.

You’ll be reaching for the Pepsi and some robot will swoop in and replace the entire shelf with Coke when the Pepsi auditor walks into the store. Then you’ll reach to bottom shelf for your Coke and just as the robot swaps it back to eye level because the Coke auditor walked in. The store having sold the same placement to both.

(Ok, a bit far-fetched, but entertaining)

amelius 2 hours ago | parent

There's a lot of data extraction being done for every game. It already uses tons of AI, and has been using it for years. Doing it by hand would have been more surprising.

What's also surprising is that despite all this data we can't automate those soccer player jobs yet.

justincormack 2 hours ago | parent

TIL that Fifa made a movie that had the worst US box office of an movie ever, taking $918 in its opening weekend.

lostlogin 2 hours ago | parent

I wouldn’t put it past FIFA to make an award ceremony like the Oscar’s so that they could win it.

Like the FIFA peace prize.

shevy-java 2 hours ago | parent

If I were to watch FIFA-controlled content, I would be annoyed about this.

Also, if I were not use heroic ad-blockers. But as I neither watch FIFA's money laundering scheme nor its ad-pester business (all gets blocked here without mercy), it does not affect me in the slightest. Hopefully these clowns pay proper taxes to aid everyone, but I bet they park their money in offshore areas anway.

holoduke 2 hours ago | parent

A bit of topic. But noaways even when having no time at all you can instruct your AI to setup DNS adguard at home and get rid of all (most) ads on any site or app. It took me literaly 10 minutes to set it up.

diego_moita 2 hours ago | parent

So what? Did anyone expect it to be different?

There is no "beautiful game". This show is only about manipulating people by exploiting their most basic and stupid instincts: aggression, tribalism, etc.

Sports entertainment has always been like that since the Coliseum and Circus Maximus were the main attractions in town.

The very expression "beautiful game" was born out of it. From the late 60s to the 70s, Brazil was one of the strongest contenders in the World Cup. They achieved that because they were able to select a roster of very skilled athletes among an huge national league. Because the country was ruled by an extremely nationalist military dictatorship, the government fully supported and promoted wrapping the country around the national team. Then the subservient sports press invented the name "jogo bonito" (beautiful game) to typify this game based on individual skills. From there, the propaganda term caught on. A similar thing happened in other countries ruled by dictatorships by then: Argentina, Chile, Portugal, Greece, Turkey,...

My point is that football's tribalism (like the Roman circus) was always at the service of some power. Before, it was autocratic nationalism in dictatorships. Now, it is just bets, alcohol and junk food.

expedition32 2 hours ago | parent

The 1978 world cup finale in Argentina was held right next to the torture center.

To put things into perspective when people whine about the American held world cup: nobody was thrown out of an airplane.

Tycho 2 hours ago | parent

It was funny a few years ago when the English Premier League was all moralistic, having players “take the knee” before matches in solidarity with social justice, meanwhile all the stadiums and team shirts and television broadcasts were abound with online gambling ads and sponsorships.

iso1631 2 hours ago | parent

They didn't "have" players "take the knee", they just didn't stop them. It's called freedom.

Tycho 2 hours ago | parent

Freedom as long as it’s a cause officially sanctioned by the league.

someguynamedq 2 hours ago | parent

Which cause did players want to support but were forbidden from?

kelipso 1 hour ago | parent

Probably Palestine related issues. Can they even talk about that stuff there without getting arrested?

NullPrefix 1 hour ago | parent

Not FIFA specific but during early 2020s players were forbidden to support skipping the vaccine

snthd 1 hour ago | parent

We don't know. It's likely they have less freedom than supporters.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6575747/2025/08/26/premier-...

>“The Premier League is clear on guidance to all its clubs in that flags, banners or other materials (including replica shirts and t-shirts) that display potential inflammatory content, which could include flags of countries in conflict, or content considered discriminatory, offensive or politically motivated, should not be permitted.

> The club also say: “In line with Premier League guidance, supporters are advised that Israeli or Palestinian flags, banners, t-shirts or materials will not be permitted to be displayed at fixtures for the foreseeable future.”

I couldn't find any of this on the Premier League website - it's all done by proxy (the clubs).

Jtarii 2 hours ago | parent

Has the league sanctioned players taking a knee for other causes?

basisword 2 hours ago | parent

How are those things in anyway related? The morality around gambling is very debatable. The morality around racism is not.

ekianjo 1 hour ago | parent

which brand is non harmful?

onaclov2000 1 hour ago | parent

I've been wondering about building counter ad technology. I think we recall their being some patents I saw sometime in the last handful of years that talked about swapping items out in a live show during reruns. But like why couldn't we just do that on our side and removing the items I assume we just pipe the HDMI in run some algorithms and then pipe it out. And I know I'm saying it as if it's trivial but if someone can write an algorithm to find existing things and swap them out it's the exact same thing except you just swap them out with a patch of the original scene for the original scene without whatever product placement I suppose.

onaclov2000 1 hour ago | parent

Also just the title of this post reminds me of ready player one (I just watched again recently), we can fill 80% of their field of view with ads before inducing seizures (I forget exact quote but it's close enough)

GJim 33 minutes ago | parent

> I've been wondering about building counter ad technology.

Ah... Old school culture jamming :-)

See also, billboard hacking and Adbusters.

gonzogato 27 minutes ago | parent

I haven’t gotten to the “replace” bit yet, but I’m automatically muting live ads and auto skipping through recorded ones: https://github.com/michigandrew/the-clicker. Love your idea

sailfast 55 minutes ago | parent

This isn’t awesome generally but I don’t understand how this study is novel in the slightest?

Ban goods or expect advertising for them, full stop.

Seems like a perfect useless academic exercise to watch the World Cup and say you’re working.

Bonus points for judgment on the health of the goods just for giggles.

MWParkerson 48 minutes ago | parent

At least it's not like the NFL, christ the constant interruptions to the broadcast are way worse than a spot on a jersey or on a barrier

baggachipz 47 minutes ago | parent

Don't worry, "hydration breaks" will catch up to NFL levels in no time.