Bristol study: FIFA World Cup 26 saturated with 9 ads per minute of harmful brands
Researchers found unhealthy food, alcohol, and gambling brands dominated sponsorships, generating 267 billion UK impressions across inescapable pitch-side advertising.
What to know
- Unhealthy food and drink brands dominated FIFA World Cup 26 sponsorship at 70.4% of all detected branding, with harmful product advertising visible for nearly a quarter of all live play and impossible for viewers to avoid.
- Four global brands—a soft drink, fast-food chain, sports drink, and crisps brand—accounted for 65% of all harmful logos, exposing UK audiences alone to 267 billion impressions across 53 broadcasts.
- FIFA distributed identical embedded advertising worldwide despite existing technology to customize ads by country, potentially violating advertising restrictions in nations where alcohol, gambling, or prediction markets are banned or limited.
Dr Raffaello Rossi Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of BristolDr Elisa Becker Researcher, University of OxfordUniversity of Bristol and University of Oxford Research institutions
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage articlesposts
-
background
Study reveals FIFA distributed identical advertising globally despite technology to customize by country — Researchers highlight that FIFA's match footage with the same embedded advertising was shared with broadcasters worldwide, including countries where alcohol, gambling, or prediction market advertising may be restricted or illegal. Despite existing virtual board replacement technology that enables different advertising in different countries, FIFA did not customize the content.
-
background
Study finds unhealthy food brands dominate tournament sponsorship at 70.4% of all branding — The analysis counted advertising built into match footage on hoardings rather than commercial breaks. Harmful branding appeared in every match and was visible during 39.3 hours of live play—almost a quarter of all action. Unhealthy food and drink brands dominated at 70.4%, followed by prediction markets (9,360 appearances), alcohol (9,266), gambling (6,429), and cryptocurrency (2,632). Four brands—a soft drink brand (21,893 logos), fast-food chain (13,915), sports drink (12,777), and crisps brand (12,087)—accounted for 65% of all harmful logos.
-
1
Bristol and Oxford researchers publish analysis of harmful branding across FIFA World Cup 26
The University of Bristol and University of Oxford released findings from the first study to examine harmful commodity branding across an entire FIFA World Cup. Using the UK's Isambard-AI supercomputer, the team analyzed all 172.6 hours of live play across 104 matches. Nearly six billion people globally engaged with the tournament, and researchers estimated harmful product advertising generated 267 billion impressions across 53 UK broadcasts.
“As one of the world's most watched sporting events, reaching billions of people, this year's FIFA World Cup provided an unparalleled platform for advertising.”
— Dr Raffaello Rossi -
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…
2 more of the top 3 · 6 posts in this stretch
-
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?
-
It's not only the World Cup, it's everything, everywhere, all the time. We are drowning in marketing messages. It's gross.
-
What people are saying 16 voices from 1 site · best of 19 · verbatim
- Sep 22
-
I'm very grateful this research was done, and that the HN community voted to get this to the front page!We need to focus on this as a global culture going forward. Very valuable to call this out.
-
Success as a pro athlete means you are effectively an advertising shill to make your income.That income doesn't come from tickets alone.
-
One thing I don't understand is why people buy football jerseys with ads on them.It's been decades since I last had a football jersey because I can't stand the idea of buying something (expensive) that has an ad on it.
-
> 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 contractAutomated ad-monitoring tools existed for decades for TV and Radio using even older DSP techniques and imperceptible audio/visual…
-
As a socialist I think advertising is one of the few good parts of capitalism. Not because it's useful for society or sometimes produces artistic value, but because it adds a sort of chaos and texture. It's a lot like graffiti in the streets.Most of it is ugly when you take it by itself but a place without it looks empty and soulless. I know it's…
-
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
-
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.
-
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…
-
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.
-
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…
-
They didn't "have" players "take the knee", they just didn't stop them. It's called freedom.
-
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.
-
TIL that Fifa made a movie that had the worst US box office of an movie ever, taking $918 in its opening weekend.
-
I'm sure this was already easily doable for years by using plain and boring computer vision
-
Marketing, the great value siphon. Marketing adds NOTHING of value of the world.
-
I think people simply ignore the banners and logos all around so its not that much of a problem