FIFA introduces advertising breaks during match times at the World Cup. Three minute stop in the middle of the half for commercials: football definitively enters the era of television sport-spectacle
It will be a beautiful football World Cup even if it will look a lot like basketball. Or to the football of the future, in the best of cases, with the lively and vibrant satisfaction of those looking for monetization spaces to make the bandwagon even richer. Welcome to Gianni Infantino’s football and let’s hope that it doesn’t occur to him to insert some other changes to the rules (without changing them) to make what has been for decades the easiest and most traditional game in the world more commercially attractive.
To make a long story short: Fifa has given the green light to the possibility for broadcasters to insert commercials during game breaks during the two halves. Which will not be random or linked to weather conditionsthe famous “cooling break” invented in 2020 when the matches were played in situations of heat and humidity incompatible with the health of the players, but they will have become two real institutionalized stops. In the middle of each half, even if the game is played in the evening, it is cool, raining or any other weather situation.
Everyone stopped on the pitch for three minutes, the minimum time needed to pretend that it wasn’t something designed to get a TV commercial. Never mind that football is by universal law (rule 7, paragraphs 1 and 2) a sport that is played over two halves of 45 minutes each with a possible “short break to quench your thirst (which must not exceed one minute) is
allowed between the two extra game periods.”
The fact that the game is being played in America, home of the sports business on television where the sporting event is now almost an obstacle between one advertisement and another, is obviously not a detail. The point, however, is different. In a world in which any regulatory change requires years of study to be made operational in order to try to preserve the identity and original spirit of the game, FIFA has decided motu proprio to radically change one of the foundations of football as it is known and practiced throughout the world.
At the World Cup, something that is more similar to basketball than soccer will be played. Point. And raise your hand if you haven’t understood that this is an irreversible transition that leads straight to the future. Why should the leagues across half of Europe or UEFA itself auction off the rights to their competitions in the coming years, selling a product to TV without advertising breaks in between? The most seen and best paid? As Antonio Griffo Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno Porfirogenito Gagliardi De Curtis of Byzantium (aka Totò) said with admirable synthesis, “anyone is stupid”. And not even in Nyon or in via Rosellini in Milan.
