Guess they're going for soccer this time too.
Commercials, 45 – 60 mins
"Standing Around" & Stoppages, 65 – 75 mins
The Halftime Show, 25 – 30 mins
Replays & Commentary, 15 – 20 mins
Actual Football Action - The ball is live and in play, 11 – 16 mins
Actual Football Action - The ball is live and in play, 80 mins
"Time-Off" Stoppages, 30 – 40 mins
Commercials, ~15 mins
Scheduled Breaks, 32 mins
Also this says nothing of on-ground and around-ground ads which I always found depressing, which I guess must exist in all sports.
The amount of "dead time" was so vast it must have taken over 3/4s of the game.
For reference, soccer matches have traditionally been 45 min half, 15 min commercials, 45 min second half.
I don't mind a 3-5 minute commercial break I can mute and ignore or skip with a DVR buffer. Traditional TV commercial breaks are the most benign. But I can't listen to 5-10 second micro-ads that can come at any time. The fandom has left my body.
"Vitello on his way to the mound for a Tavis Law Mound visit".
"Matt Chapman in the Golden Gate Carpet on-deck circle."
"Don't forget, it's Taco Bell Tuesday here at Oracle Park. Every Tuesday is Taco Bell Tuesday!"
Ugh.
Nah, the emperor has no clothes, and everyone in that industry's job is dependent on not acknowledging that fact. Don't worry, a bunch of commenters are about to chime in and try and tell me I'm wrong, and that I will in fact go and buy that Kia because the idea was incepted in my head by the stadium rights agreement.
Feels like the scenes in the Matrix when ordinary people suddenly morph into agents.
That's the point though. They want your attention, so not getting it is a failure signal. And they'll try anything they can think of to succeed.
As an average IPL game of T20 cricket viewer can tell you.
Basically every over consists of 6 balls bowled, times 40(each team gets 20 overs)
And ads are sold on each ball, so 240 ad slots for sale, these are overlay ads, so basically the feed gets reduced to 70% of the screen and you see an ad for the remaning 30% typically for 5 secs.
On top of this after each over(6 balls), you get full screen targeted ads for 30 secs before the nexy over starts. This targeted ad is exclusively sold for your demographic account. Your friend or a family member will see a completely different sst of targeted ads.
A wicket(batter got out)? You dont need to watch a replay of how it happened here is 30 secs of more ads in the middle of the over while the new batsman walks on to the field. I wish this was sarcasm.
And on top of all this, you get a full 2min 30sec "strategic timeout" in between each innings to guess what? Run more ads.
And all of this just in the span of just over 3 hours start to finish.
Rinse and Repeat.
Speak for yourself. /s After seeing "sitcoms" where an unseen audience "laughs" at the "funny" parts, i think there is still room for improvement. We can have some "crying" when it is a sad scene. And of course, all of these, unskipable.
Ad-merica.