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World Cup Hydration Breaks Were Not About Commercials

As the world gets hotter, playing sports in the heat gets more dangerous. Telemundo is the only publication that got this right.

Argentina’s Lionel Messi (10) sprays water on his face at the World Cup championship final soccer match between Spain and Argentina in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Sunday, July 19, 2026.

The 2026 World Cup will be remembered in part for bringing the term “hydration break” into the global football lexicon. For the first time in the Cup’s 96-year history, matches were interrupted midway through each half so players could hydrate and rest. Many fans disliked the breaks, complaining that they were simply an excuse to show more TV commercials during what is, after all, the most watched sporting event in the world.

That suspicion is not entirely wrong, but it confuses outcome with cause. There are good reasons, grounded in science and articulated by the international football players union, for hydration breaks. But almost none of the US media coverage of the 2026 World Cup, with one outstanding exception, highlighted those reasons, much less explained them.

The exception was Telemundo, the Spanish-language TV network whose news division has been a leader in climate coverage. On July 3, journalist Vanessa Hauc, the host of Telemundo’s weekly environment program Planeta Tierra, appeared on the broadcast of the much-anticipated match between the defending champions, Argentina, and everyone’s favorite underdogs, Cape Verde. At the time, hundreds of millions of Americans were under extreme heat warnings from a “heat dome” that scientists said would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.

Andrés Cantor, the Telemundo announcer famous for his prolonged shout of “Gooooooooal” whenever a team scores, introduced Hauc, saying that “although the hydration breaks are highly controversial, there’s a deeper reason for them.” Hauc reported that the game-time temperature of 89 degrees Fahrenheit in Miami “can feel closer to 101 [degrees]” on the field, when humidity and the sun’s rays are factored in. “That’s........

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