ITV says its biggest-yet World Cup is a ‘six-week Super Bowl’ for advertising

Broadcaster reveals revenues from expanded tournament are running about 30% higher than for Euro 2024

The World Cup will be the most lucrative sports event ITV has ever aired, the broadcaster has said, with bosses calling the tournament a “six-week summer Super Bowl moment” for TV advertising.

The channel is airing 51 of the 104 matches across the men’s tournament, co-hosted by the US, Mexico and Canada, which is the biggest yet after an expansion from 32 to 48 teams.

Kelly Williams, managing director of commercial at ITV, told the Guardian its advertising revenues are running about 30% above those it took from the last big football tournament, Euro 2024, when England reached the final.

“This will be our most commercially successful tournament ever,” said Williams. “It is not just one game but six weeks of really big TV audiences. It is effectively our six-week summer Super Bowl moment.”

ITV began selling commercial packages for the World Cup last autumn, with Google taking the headline sponsorship to promote its Gemini and Pixel products. However, it is holding back prime slots around games later in the tournament, which can demand hefty premiums if England progress to the later stages.

The broadcaster does not break out the cost of individual ads but media industry sources estimate that a 30-second commercial in an England game can cost as much as £300,000.

Williams said that at the last World Cup, when there were only 64 matches in total, a typical game averaged 6 million viewers, while those involving England peaked at 20-25 million, depending on the stage of the tournament.

“In a world where viewing habits have changed and audiences have fragmented I think these kind of shared cultural moments are more important and valued by advertisers,” said Williams. “They are just unique audiences. You can’t get them on streaming services, or social media, or YouTube. It is live and free to air.”

The opportunity to reach these audiences has been embraced by advertisers, with ITV so far having sold packages to 220 different advertisers, with 70 of those running TV ads in football coverage for the first time. Williams said that about eight advertisers are new to TV advertising.

One of those is Jeremy Clarkson’s Hawkstone lager brand, which booked slots after the huge media coverage produced by the success of the Hawkstone Farmers’ Choir winning Britain’s Got Talent last month.

The most high-profile ad campaign is Nike’s World Cup ad which, at six minutes, will be the longest commercial ever aired on TV in the UK. The ad of superstar footballers, which