World Cup Broadcasts Exposed Viewers to Harmful Branding Every Seven Seconds, Study Finds

^{Researchers say pitch-side branding for unhealthy food, alcohol and gambling brands was visible during almost a quarter of all live World Cup play. (Photo: Krzysztof Popławski / Wikimedia Commons)}

Broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup exposed viewers to logos for unhealthy food, alcohol, gambling and speculative products roughly once every seven seconds of live play, according to a study published on 22 September 2026 by the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford.

The research team recorded 93,409 visible appearances of harmful commodity branding across all 104 matches of the tournament, a total of 172.6 hours of live football. The analysis, carried out using the University of Bristol's Isambard-AI supercomputer, counted branding built into match footage itself, such as pitch-side hoardings, rather than commercials shown during advertising breaks.

Gambling Logos Appeared Nearly 6,500 Times

Unhealthy food and drink brands accounted for more than seven in ten of all logos detected, with 65,722 appearances. Prediction market brands followed with 9,360 appearances, ahead of alcohol on 9,266, gambling on 6,429 and cryptocurrency on 2,632.

Four globally recognised brands, a soft drink, a fast-food chain, a sports drink and a crisps brand, were together responsible for 65% of all the harmful commodity logos the researchers logged. Harmful product branding appeared in every one of the tournament's matches and was visible for 39.3 hours of live play, close to a quarter of the total.

FIFA said close to six billion people engaged with the tournament worldwide, with broadcast records broken in more than 30 countries. For the UK alone, the researchers estimated the branding generated 267 billion impressions across the 53 broadcasts for which audience data were available.

Researchers Point to Broadcasts Reaching Restricted Markets

Dr Raffaello Rossi, senior lecturer in marketing and co-director of the Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms Research, and a co-author of the study, said the findings show how unavoidable the branding was for anyone following the tournament.

"Our findings reveal the sheer scale of branding embedded throughout tournament broadcasts, making exposure to unhealthy food, alcohol and gambling brands both omnipresent and unavoidable for viewers," Rossi said in the university's public statement.

Dr Elisa Becker, a researcher at Oxford's Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and the study's other co-author, said the tournament's broadcast footage carried the same embedded advertising for every audience, including in countries where gambling, alcohol or prediction market advertising is restricted or banned outright. The researchers noted that virtual board-replacement technology, which lets broadcasters swap in different pitch-side adverts for different territories, already exists but is inconsistently used.

The study did not break out Irish audience figures specifically, but its findings arrive as regulators across Europe weigh tighter controls on where and how gambling and alcohol brands can appear during major sporting broadcasts. Ireland's gambling regulator has previously worked with the UK's Gambling Commission to align enforcement standards, a relationship that could feed into any future push for tighter sponsorship rules.

What Comes Next

The full report, titled The Price of the Beautiful Game, is published by the University of Bristol's Business School and calls for broadcasters and tournament organisers to use existing technology to restrict harmful branding in markets where it would otherwise be illegal.

The debate over gambling-branded sponsorship is not new to Irish sport; proposals to raise gambling taxes have already stirred pushback from the industry, and campaigners are likely to cite the Bristol-Oxford data as further evidence for tighter rules ahead of future tournaments. Whether FIFA or its broadcast partners respond before the next major tournament remains to be seen.