Fox turned FIFA’s new hydration breaks into commercial time during the World Cup opener between Mexico and South Africa, and Carli Lloyd did not hide what she thought of it. The former United States star posted a one-line reaction on X after the broadcast cut away from live play: “I hate it.”
The reaction landed because Fox’s approach did more than interrupt the rhythm of Thursday’s match. After Raul Jimenez scored for Mexico in the 67th minute, Ian Darke told viewers, “And that leads to the hydration break, powered to you by Powerade,” and Fox then ran about two minutes of advertisements. Players were ready to resume around the 69:30 mark, but referee Wilton Sampaio told South Africa to hold its kickoff while the network was still in commercial time.
The match was the first World Cup opener to feature FIFA’s new three-minute hydration breaks at the midpoint of each 45-minute half. FIFA announced the format in December as a player welfare measure, and said the referee would call the breaks in all games, with no weather or temperature condition attached. In March, it emerged that full-screen ads would be allowed with guardrails: the commercial block was not supposed to start within 20 seconds of the whistle and broadcasters were supposed to return to the feed at least 30 seconds before play resumed.
Fox did not fully meet that second requirement in the first half of Mexico-South Africa, though it did not miss any match action then. In the second half, it cut back to the game several seconds after play had already restarted, meaning U.S. viewers missed part of the action while the network tried to fit in a Verizon spot featuring David Beckham, a Bank of America commercial and an Adidas ad with Lamine Yamal. Telemundo, meanwhile, took a different route and kept the players on camera while commentators talked through the pause, with an L-shaped Lays ad filling the left side and bottom of the screen.
That split leaves Fox with a simple question for the rest of the tournament: whether it can sell the breaks without losing the live moment that makes the World Cup worth watching. Lloyd has already given her answer, and viewers who missed the restart know why she was so quick to say it.
