Fox Sports Generates Hundreds of Millions in Ad Revenue from World Cup Hydration Breaks

For fans and players, they're not worth much at all, and have engendered complaints they break up the flow of the game and topple decades of strategy.

But for Fox Sports, the company airing the tournament in the U.S., the dollar figures loom larger than Lionel Messi lining up for a penalty kick: At least $250 million, with a plausible value of $500 million-600 million.

Yes, that's how much the company is likely to collect from advertisers for those sneaked-in ads from the likes of Nike, Adidas, Coke and Lenovo smack in the middle of gameplay