3 facts to ruin your World Cup watch party
It's a tough job. But somebody has to do it.
This year’s World Cup has something no other World Cup has had before: commercial breaks. This means that each match now contains two three-ish-minute opportunities to absolutely demolish the vibe of the party by talking about things that nobody wants to hear about, but probably should.
Here are three of my suggestions.
“You know, these commercials are only happening because of climate change.”
This will probably be your most natural transition from game to grooaaan. Back in December, FIFA announced that this year’s World Cup would include three-minute hydration breaks for players midway through each half of every match, and that broadcasters would be permitted (but not required) to run commercial breaks during that time.
These mandated water breaks, FIFA said, are due to increasingly intense heat and humidity conditions putting player safety at risk. This overall rise in extreme heat is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, as the New York Times explained Friday:
Since the last time World Cup matches were played in North America in 1994, the world has warmed roughly 1.3 degrees [Celsius]1. And the frequency of extreme heat in June and July has on average tripled across this year’s 10 host cities that previously hosted World Cup games. …
In recent days, the English team has practiced in the Miami sun in an effort to acclimatize its athletes and prepare for what could be one of the hottest tournaments on record. And last month a group of 21 scientists, including physiologists and climate experts, wrote to FIFA, the sport’s governing body, saying that its current safety guidelines for heat were insufficient and “impossible to justify,” and urging it to give players longer breaks and implement “aggressive” locker-room cooling, among other steps.
FIFA has framed these hydration breaks as an attempt to ensure players remain safe. Others have a more understandably cynical interpretation: That FIFA is using player welfare as an excuse to money grab. The breaks are, after all, mandated no matter the weather. It could be cool and raining and commercials would still run.
“This is effectively a parallel to greenwashing, where the use of climate change and the pretence of care for players is used to distort the Laws of the Game and insert commercials,” wrote reddit user Hot-Job-6281 on Friday.
But even if FIFA is exploiting the climate rationale for ad money, the climate rationale still exists. The world is getting hotter, and it is threatening the safety of World Cup players and spectators. An analysis by Climate Central found that climate change is “boosting the likelihood of performance-impairing heat” during 97 of 104 scheduled World Cup matches. It also happens to be making our at-home watching experience super annoying. So do your part: tell your friends. It can’t be more bothersome than the ads themselves… right?
Read more: The 2026 World Cup could be the hottest yet
“Omg, that last point was crazy! Almost as crazy how much this event pollutes.”
OK, now we’re getting into the territory of possibly being more annoying than the commercials. But this is your duty; you must persist.
Last month, geographer David Gogishvili at the University of Lausanne told AFP that this year’s World Cup would "produce the largest carbon footprint in the history of international sport:" anywhere from 5 million to 9 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. For comparison, the 2024 Paris Olympics emitted around 1.75 million tons.
Other estimates have been similar. An analysis from the New Weather Institute found that the 2026 World Cup is “on track to be the ‘most polluting’ World Cup ever,” with total emissions hitting nearly two times the historical average. They conservatively predicted that the World Cup would emit about 9 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, which is about the same as 21 gas-fired power plants running for a year; 1.9 million cars driven for a year; or 9 billion pounds of coal burned.
This is mostly because FIFA chose to have not one, but three host countries: the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and a total of 16 host venues. In addition, the tournament added an extra 16 teams. That all means a lot of air travel. Scientists estimate air travel emissions for the World Cup to be around 7 million tons of CO2 equivalent, with worst case predictions at 13.7 million tons.
Why does this matter? For one, FIFA is doing this while publicly touting a commitment to sustainability, including reaching net-zero emissions by 2040. As Jules Boykoff wrote for the Guardian, “to passively allow Fifa to willfully trash the environment is to succumb to greenwashing: the duplicitous practice of talking a big green game, but failing to follow through with meaningful sustainability measures.”
The biggest problem is not just the emissions from one tournament. It fact that model FIFA is choosing an ever-increasing emissions model for the future of the sport, which is already suffering under a warmer world. As Le Monde put it, “FIFA is embracing this irresponsible approach, which risks harming both players and the sport itself.” In other words, FIFA is helping make future tournaments hotter, riskier, and more polluting. No amount of water breaks are going to solve that problem.
“Oh man I’m having so much fun!! It’d be more fun if we weren’t supporting Saudi Aramco though.”
Be sure to save this one for when everyone is super drunk. They will love it.
Aramco, the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil and gas company, is the world's largest corporate climate polluter, estimated to be responsible for over 4 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions since 1965.
It is also a top sponsor of the 2026 World Cup and has a four-year global partnership agreement with FIFA, “which means the fossil fuel giant’s logo is likely to be visible on the field, online and on TV during this year’s World Cup and the Women’s World Cup in 2027,” the L.A. Times reported.
FIFA has defended the partnership by saying Aramco’s revenue (~$400 million!) is being reinvested in the game. But FIFA hasn’t mentioned what it’s giving back Aramco in return: social license—aka, permission from the public to maintain business as usual. By propping up the world’s most beloved sport, Aramco is trying to buy the love of its millions of fans, even as its core business helps make the sport far more dangerous. This practice is called sportswashing.
This one might piss off your friends enough to get them to want to do something about it. And if they do, you can point them toward action. On June 21, the Sierra Club is organizing “Protest Fossil Fuel Sportswashing” actions at various stadiums across the U.S., calling on FIFA World Cup and other teams to drop fossil fuel sponsorships. Actions are happening in L.A., Miami, New Jersey, Toronto, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, and Cleveland. You can find more info here.
If your friends don’t get pissed off about this, though, it’s possible you might get kicked out of your party. And if that happens, well, maybe you need better friends.
If you have any other party-ruining factoids, let me know in the comments.
Further reading:
The FIFA World Cup is brought to you by Saudi oil. These fans and players want to stop it. From CBC Radio in Canada:
Dutch athlete Tessel Middag is one of more than 130 professional women’s soccer players who signed an open letter in 2024 criticizing FIFA’s decision to partner with Saudi Aramco. Activism, she says, comes naturally to women’s soccer players, who have always had to fight for their place in the sport.
"We feel like the good work that we and our predecessors, the women that came before us have done, would be dishonoured by partnerships such as the one that was announced with Saudi Aramco," Middag said.Meet the baseball player who’s tired of promoting Big Oil. Sammy Roth over at Climate Colored Goggles has an exclusive interview with Los Angeles Angels relief pitcher Brent Suter, “the first American pro athlete to speak out against fossil fuel advertising in sports.”
Have I used and directly benefited from fossil fuels in my life? Absolutely. Do I believe that continuing to fully depend on fossil fuels as a society is dangerous? Absolutely. We need to find ways to power our society in cleaner ways, and I want to represent companies that want to be part of the solution.
Previous HEATED coverage of climate and sports:
Correction: A previous version said Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. HEATED regrets not catching the New York Times’s error.
Shameless happy dance at my first hit in Heated! But I ain't selling a thing except a climate protest! Join us to tell FIFA and other sportswashers to drop sponsors like Saudi Aramco--the world's largest oil behemoth. We'll be making peaceful noise at at least 9 World Cup and other stadiums advertising for fossil fuels. Sign up here! https://tinyurl.com/3wa6fh44
Any idea how much water is used to keep the pitches fresh, or how many host cities are facing drought conditions? My friend group is pretty optimistic so gotta put in the extra work to bring them down