The hydration break. The scourge of the soccer fan at the 2026 FIFA World Cup (well, the other one, aside from Alexi Lalas).

Aside from who you think is going to win it all, it’s been the most hotly debated aspect of this year’s tournament.

Not because they’re entirely new, per se. There were three-minute breaks around the 22nd minute at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. However, the extreme temperatures in that climate gave them credence and a valid reason for their existence.

In 2026, however, when many of the matches are played in climate-controlled domes and at temperatures well within the normal range, their continued existence was presumed to be more about the possibility of incorporating advertising into the middle of a match than about player welfare.

Sure enough, some World Cup broadcasters took FIFA up on the offer. The governing body left it up to each broadcaster to decide whether to show ads or remain with the game. The BBC, ITV, and Telemundo are among those who declined to show commercials, but many others have. American English-language rights holder Fox Sports and Canadian host broadcaster TSN are among those showing ads, as are the broadcasters in Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, Ireland, and Germany (per The Athletic).

And if one thing has become abundantly clear to all of them, it’s that these hydration break ads, which add up to around 10 hours of extra ad time over the course of the whole tournament, are incredibly lucrative.

30-second hydration break spots on Fox are reportedly going for anywhere from $200,000 to $750,000, depending on the match. The broadcaster could potentially bring in $250 million in revenue from those ad spots alone.

Writing for CBC, Richard Deitsch spoke with several media analysts and experts in the industry, and they all seem convinced that hydration breaks, and the financial incentives to show commercials during them, are here to stay.

“This is a tremendously valuable move from the standpoint of sports media, and Fox has indicated as much by taking advantage of the ad breaks to run at least four commercials within each half,” Ed Desser, the president of consultancy Desser Sports Media Inc., told CBC.

The post FIFA’s World Cup hydration breaks are probably here to stay appeared first on Awful Announcing.

CBS Sports is heading into the 2026 NFL season with presumably two open slots in its fourth broadcast booth.

ESPN re-signed Jason McCourty to a new multi-year exclusive deal on Thursday, pulling him away from the CBS booth he shared last season with play-by-play man Andrew Catalon, analyst Charles Davis, and sideline reporter A.J. Ross.

Davis is gone too, heading to college football full-time after being named Gary Danielson’s successor as CBS’s lead Big Ten analyst alongside Brad Nessler and Jenny Dell.

That leaves Catalon and Ross as the only returning pieces of a booth that has now cycled through three different analyst combinations in as many years.

Catalon spent the 2024 season working alongside McCourty, Tiki Barber, and Ross before Barber departed for WFAN to cover the New York Giants. Davis filled that vacancy last season, but only because he had been bumped from CBS’s No. 2 broadcast team — where he had worked alongside Ian Eagle — after J.J. Watt was brought in to take that analyst role for the 2025 season. CBS had already set the plan for Davis’s future in March 2025, when the network announced that Danielson — the longest-tenured lead college football analyst on any network — would retire after the season, with Davis as his replacement.

CBS, for its part, has been more focused on filling out its studio. Russell Wilson retired from playing to join The NFL Today, choosing CBS over a contract offer from the New York Jets, and Kyle Long was promoted to the main desk after years of working his way up through CBS Sports Network and Paramount+. The two join James Brown, Bill Cowher, and Nate Burleson on an NFL Today set that looks considerably different from the one it had a year ago, replacing Matt Ryan and Watt, whom the network originally chose not to replace.

There was perhaps a world where Long could have slotted into the fourth booth as part of a three-man team before his NFL Today promotion took him off the table. So the most logical internal candidate to step in would seem to be Logan Ryan, who spent last season working CBS games across both the NFL and college football.

Ryan shadowed Jim Nantz and Tony Romo for an entire week ahead of the Patriots-Buccaneers game in November, sitting in on production meetings and learning how CBS’s top team prepares, before Nantz brought him into the broadcast midway through the fourth quarter. It might not be the last we see of him in an NFL booth.

The post CBS Sports will need a new NFL booth appeared first on Awful Announcing.

Meadowlark Media’s Mike Fuentes announced his departure from the company on Friday.

In a post on X, Fuentes wrote that he was “no longer working with the Dan Le Batard Show and Meadowlark Media in any capacity,” adding, “Will share more when I’m ready.”

The video producer and occasional on-air talent joined Meadowlark in May 2022, according to his LinkedIn page. Fuentes worked on the flagship Dan Le Batard Show and Mystery Crate, which featured the show’s producers giving behind-the-scenes insights. Most recently, Fuentes was the lead producer for Dave Dameshek’s Football America.

Fuentes’ brother, Gino, also works as a producer for Meadowlark.

After Le Batard Show fans circulated an off-color video thumbnail that had been replaced on the company’s YouTube channel early Friday as a potential cause of Fuentes’ departure, Fuentes clarified that he played no role in the graphic.

“I have not been the lead producer of Mystery Crate for some time,” he wrote on X. “I was only asked to stay on as a talent and for assistance wherever the new producers needed it. Anything else beyond that, I was not aware of and did not come across my desk.”

I have not been the lead producer of Mystery Crate for some time. I was only asked to stay on as a talent and for assistance wherever the new producers needed it. Anything else beyond that, I was not aware of and did not come across my desk.

Have a good weekend.

— Mike Fuentes (@mikefountains) June 19, 2026

Fuentes also clarified that his departure officially went through the prior day, June 18.

Both Fuentes and Meadowlark declined comment.

Earlier in the week, Meadowlark founder Dan Le Batard announced that the name of his longtime co-host, Jon “Stugotz” Weiner, would be removed from the show’s title after months of largely unexplained tensions between the two hosts. Fuentes contributed to Stugotz’s podcast before the latter left Meadowlark a year ago.

Fuentes joins a growing list of public exits from Meadowlark in that span, including Stugotz, co-founder John Skipper, and on-air personalities Billy Gil, Charlotte Wilder, Lucy Rohden, and Howard Bryant. Former cast member Jessica Smetana remains in a reduced role.

The post ‘Dan Le Batard Show’ producer Mike Fuentes announces departure appeared first on Awful Announcing.

For the first time in its inaugural season as the exclusive U.S. home of Formula 1, Apple TV is making a complete race weekend available to anyone who wants to watch.

The streamer announced its making the entire Austrian Grand Prix weekend free to U.S. viewers starting Friday, June 26, through Sunday’s race on June 28. That means all five sessions — two practice rounds Friday, a third Saturday morning, qualifying Saturday afternoon, and the Grand Prix on Sunday — are available in the Apple TV app without a subscription.

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Apple TV (@appletv)

Apple signed a five-year, $750 million deal to take F1’s U.S. rights from ESPN, which had held them since 2018. ESPN had the ability to match Apple’s offer but declined. It was a consequential decision to walk away from, given that ESPN had just set a record 1.3 million viewers per race in its final F1 season, with 16 of 24 races setting individual viewership highs. F1 had grown 135% during its time on ESPN, from 554,000 viewers per race at the start of the partnership.

Apple TV accounts for less than half a percent of all television viewing in the United States, and its estimated domestic subscriber base of 18.7 million is a considerably smaller pool than the 60 million cable and satellite households ESPN could reach. After the Australian Grand Prix opener, Apple told The Hollywood Reporter that viewership had topped ESPN’s numbers from a year prior, but declined to release any data to support the assertion.

While Apple hasn’t offered much transparency into how many people are watching, F1 executives have been more vocal about what they believe the move to streaming solves. Chief media rights officer Ian Holmes has argued that housing every session on one platform improves discoverability for fans.

“If it’s on ESPNEWS and then the next session is on ESPN College and then ESPN3, it doesn’t help discoverability,” Holmes told Sports Business Journal earlier this year. “Whereas having it all housed effectively on a single page definitely increases the knowledge of exactly what content is available.”

That page, next weekend, is free. And with it comes access to the full suite of features Apple has touted since acquiring the rights. Apple’s broadcast runs in 4K Dolby Vision with 5.1 audio, multiview support for up to four simultaneous feeds, onboard cameras, live telemetry, and a choice between F1 TV and Sky Sports presentations.

The post Apple TV is making an entire F1 race weekend free for the first time appeared first on Awful Announcing.

The 2026 World Cup has turned out to be an awesome experience because of all of the different countries and cultures coming to North America and having a wonderful time. But in the case of the BBC, they may have taken some creative liberties when it comes to celebrating the city of Houston.

Houston has a lot going for it. The city is the fifth most-populous metropolitan area in the country. Its port on the Gulf of Mexico drives international and global trade. It’s the center of American space travel. It’s one of the most diverse cities in America. And for the 2026 World Cup, it’s serving as one of the host cities for the tournament.

One thing Houston does not have is mountains.

Houston sits on the Gulf Coastal Plain and rests at just 105 feet above sea level. Nobody is going to confuse it with Denver anytime soon.

However, when the BBC was at halftime of the Portugal vs Democratic Republic of the Congo game that was taking place in the city, they showcased a green screen backdrop of the Houston skyline. Except for some unknown reason, they added mountains in the background to try to dress it up a little bit in what may have been some kind of stroke of AI or CGI genius.

.@BBC adding mountains to the green screen background of Houston is one of the most dubious things I’ve ever seen pic.twitter.com/3AltHaHwLR

— Reed Wilburn, MD, MS (@drwilburnmd) June 17, 2026

The pro sports teams in Houston had some fun with the BBC’s geographical error with both the Dynamo and the Rockets making light of their newfound mountain scenery.

You just can’t beat this view https://t.co/s374v1svtypic.twitter.com/21vKwVTE6n

— Houston Dynamo FC (@HoustonDynamo) June 18, 2026

Just another beautiful day in the Houston Alps https://t.co/7mTko482Hspic.twitter.com/Me0zn03MN2

— Houston Rockets (@HoustonRockets) June 18, 2026

We’ve seen some creative liberties or oversights in B-roll footage around sports telecasts happen before, but never quite to this level. But if the BBC is going to give Houston a nice desert mountain range they should just go all the way with it. Let’s see some beautiful waterfalls in New York, a Kansas City tropical paradise, and a view of Los Angeles that has no traffic to speak of.

The post BBC somehow gives Houston glorious mountain range appeared first on Awful Announcing.

One week of the World Cup is officially in the books. And for all the complaints over hydration breaks, Fox’s coverage of the event, or whether other networks are giving the tournament requisite attention, one thing remains abundantly clear. The World Cup is a viewership event like no other.

Through the first weekend, Fox’s viewership is up 152% versus its Group Stage average for 2022 in Qatar. Telemundo, the Spanish-language broadcaster, is up an even more eye-watering 234%. Unsurprisingly, both are on record pace.

The data would seem to indicate that viewers are still quite happy finding the World Cup on good, old-fashioned linear television. Sure, these numbers include streaming viewership on Fox One and Peacock, respectively, but by-and large, World Cup viewers are watching on linear television.

Next year, no such option will be available. The 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup will stream exclusively on Netflix in the United States. It’ll be the first major global sporting event to air exclusively on streaming in this country, and could very well be a sign of things to come as we look towards who will broadcast the 2030 FIFA Men’s World Cup.

It’s worth examining the differing economic models at play here between streamers and traditional broadcasters, because that could very well determine where that 2030 tournament goes.

The World Cup is a unique property in the context of other live sporting events, most of which occur on an annual, or at least biannual in the case of the Olympics, basis. That’s an important distinction. Traditional broadcasters like Fox, NBC, or ESPN are still largely in the business of distribution fees. Since the advent of cable and satellite bundles, the overarching economics of these networks can be boiled down to one question: How much is your content worth to viewers? That question determines the per-subscriber fee distributors like DirecTV, Comcast, or Fubo are willing to pay networks. It’s why NFL programming, far and away the most popular content left on television, is borderline existential for legacy broadcasters.

However, the quadrennial nature of the World Cup makes it a difficult bargaining chip for networks during distribution negotiations. Most major distribution deals are done on a three-year cycle. So for Fox, it’s possible that there have been distribution agreements in the past where the network wasn’t able to leverage its World Cup rights at all, or at least had to extend the deal’s term to ensure the value of the event was included, perhaps at a discount. But it’s not simply the cycle disparity that creates issues, it’s the difficulty of valuating an event that only happens once every four years, in different parts of the globe, broadcast to an audience that is historically soccer-agnostic.

The value of a World Cup varies greatly based on where it’s played, and the time zones the American audience will be dealing with. Obviously, one held in North America, with the United States having a guaranteed spot in the tournament as a host country, is going to be a much easier sell to distributors than, say, the 2018 tournament in Russia, where the United States failed to qualify. Location, of course, can be accounted for during distribution negotiations. Those are known far in advance. Whether the United States will be participating? At least back when the field was 32 teams, rather than 48, that was far from a guarantee. That downside risk, at least previously, made the World Cup far more challenging for networks to leverage during distribution negotiations than a surefire annual property like the NFL or college football.

There’s no such calculus for a streamer, whose business fortunes are determined by selling subscriptions directly to the consumer, rather than through a middleman distributor. In that way, purchasing a sports property like the World Cup is similar to producing a handful of big-budget feature films. You hope that the subscriptions generated from the event make the rights fee worthwhile. What you don’t have to do is convince DirecTV that it should pay you more for a five-week-long sporting event that’s 28 months away.

Fox is paying a reported $485 million for this year’s World Cup, a price that some experts say is two- or three-times under market value, thanks to the no-bid contract FIFA awarded the network on account of moving the 2022 Qatar World Cup to autumn. It’s safe to assume, then, that when FIFA goes to market with the 2030 World Cup, it’s expecting upwards of $1 billion for the rights.

The question becomes, does the quadrennial event drive more than $1 billion in incremental distribution revenue for legacy broadcast networks? Maybe, but it’s a tough sell, particularly when the majority of that event will be played in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco.

Of course, this is a bit of an oversimplification. The World Cup also drives plenty of ad revenue and streaming subscriptions for legacy broadcasters. But at a time when these same broadcasters are tightening content spends in preparation for an expected increase in price of NFL rights, the World Cup might fall firmly in the “nice to have” rather than “must have” category. Between the volatility in value and the fact that it’s simply hard to capitalize on an event that happens in only one of every 48 months, the World Cup just seems to make more sense for a streamer.

If so, the World Cup Final one month from today could mark the end of an era.

This originally appeared in the Friday edition of  The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter with the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis. Sign up here and be the first to know everything you need to know about the sports media world.

The post Will this be the last World Cup on TV? appeared first on Awful Announcing.

Michael Kay wants to make it very clear that he and former YES Network announcing partner John Flaherty remain on very good terms.

“I had never had friction with John Flaherty in my life, ever,” the Yankees play-by -play announcer said on Wednesday’s edition of The Michael Kay Show. “That was not anything that I wanted nor anything that I was comfortable with.”

Flaherty’s contract wasn’t renewed after the 2025 season following a 20-year stint with YES, and some conspiratorial viewers seemed to think Kay had something to do with it.

“I love John Flaherty,” Kay said. “I thought that John Flaherty was one of the most valuable people that we had at the network.”

The ESPN New York host added that he believes the rumors of his disdain for Flaherty stem from a 2024 YES broadcast of a Yankees-Cubs game, which sounded incredibly awkward to many viewers.

Extremely uncomfortable moment during the Yankees and Cubs broadcast on YES network as @RealMichaelKay and John Flaherty come off like bitter passive aggressive ex lovers…

What the hell was this?

Def looking forward to hearing about this on Kay’s show. pic.twitter.com/uf04G0J0A2

— Frank Pellegrino (@FrankP614) September 6, 2024

“You weren’t very talkative on the bus this morning to the field, but as I was driving here, I was thinking it would be great to get a place that’s close so you could walk back and forth,” Flaherty said to Kay during the 2024 broadcast. “I know you mentioned Don Zimmer living in the apartments out in center field. But I just had a lot of time to think on the team bus today, because it was very quiet.”

“So you’d rather me be chatty? I wasn’t feeling great,” replied Kay.

“I haven’t seen you in a long time, right? You don’t work road trips anymore when I’m on the road,” Flaherty chirped back. “So I thought we would catch up, and it quickly was evident that you weren’t in the mood, so I gathered my thoughts about how it would be nice to live close to Wrigley and walk back and forth to the park.”

“Interesting narrative that you’re putting together, because I’ve been told by executives that you prefer to work with [Ryan] Ruocco,” replied Kay. “That’s why you two guys are matched up all the time. That’s just what I heard, I don’t know if there’s any truth to it.”

“I just put together that the road trips you don’t want to go on are the ones where I end up working with Ryan Ruocco, because you don’t want to work the games on the road,” Flaherty responded.

The incident caused so much consternation that Yankees GM Brian Cashman and manager Aaron Boone both asked about the awkward interaction afterward.

During the next day’s broadcast, Kay and Flaherty pushed back against the narrative that they hated each other, saying they bicker all the time and like each other very much, and eventually hugging it out in the booth.

Michael Kay and John Flaherty address Friday’s exchange on Saturday’s YES Network broadcast at Wrigley Field.

Meredith Marakovits adds, “Guys, you would not believe the chatter in the (Yankees) clubhouse today about the two of you.”

Kay: “Are you serious?” https://t.co/CoTWMrIgnUpic.twitter.com/FreBqEpxOW

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 7, 2024

Even though they made it clear that there were no hard feelings, the presumption that the two have real animosity apparently lingers.

Kay wanted to make it abundantly clear this week that he and Flaherty remain close, even though their working relationship is now over.

“We’re still absolute friends,” Kay said.

The post Michael Kay clears air on John Flaherty’s YES Network exit: ‘We’re still absolute friends’ appeared first on Awful Announcing.

The Texas Tech-Brendan Sorsby gambling scandal came to an unceremonious conclusion with Sorsby opting to leave college football entirely. After fighting tooth and nail for months to overturn his gambling probe-related ban from the NCAA, Sorsby ultimately applied to the NFL’s supplemental draft, ending a lengthy legal and PR battle.

As the quarterback turns his attention to the NFL, his agent, Ron Slavin, is making his feelings clear about the media’s overarching reaction to the saga.

“Everybody loves to have an opinion. I’m so tired of watching people get on TV and blab their mouth when they have no idea what they’re talking about,” Slavin said on Shan & RJ. “Unfortunately, it’s not just in Brendan’s situation; it’s in most situations.

“Unless you’re Brendan or Brendan’s family or myself and my team, nobody really knows what happened. The opinions out there were, you would have thought this kid committed major crimes and did the horrible things. The reality is, as an 18 year old, he made some bad decisions from his dorm room when he wasn’t traveling with the team in Indiana.”

Slavin pointed toward the widespread prevalence of gambling advertisements as leaving young people susceptible to the pitfalls of betting.

“The predatory world of gambling, where you turn 18 and deposit $5 you get a free $100. Every single show on TV, every single radio show, everything is sponsored by a gambling site. So, it’s a scary world we’re living in. These kids have all been raised now with phones in their hands. So, it’s real easy to get on an app and place a bet.”

Slavin isn’t alone in this feeling. Colin Cowherd echoed his sentiment, saying on his podcast that “Sorsby’s a college kid who grew up in the first gambling generation. Of course, this was going to happen.” Pardon the Interruption’s Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon also called out the hypocrisy. Still, regardless of whether the media’s or the NCAA’s ties to gambling are a part of the cause, athletes betting on their teams and compromising the integrity of games is a symptom that has to be treated.

Sorsby’s situation has cast doubt on the NCAA’s ability to proactively do so moving forward, but if efforts to get things under control don’t start soon, Sorsby is bound to be case-zero, rather than a one-off.

The post Brendan Sorsby’s agent slams media: ‘Nobody really knows what happened’ appeared first on Awful Announcing.