Not short of genuine innovations for the viewer at home, this World Cup. But which of the boundary-shifting presentational devices debuted in the Americas over the past month have positively enhanced our viewing experience? And which ones do we quietly hope to see placed in a file marked ‘Ideas which, ideally, nobody would have had’?
Whole-Squad Walk-Ons
Let’s keep this. Televised games typically open with tracksuited subs randomly pushing past the team lines in the tunnel in order to nab the best seats in the dugout. Putting everyone on pre-match parade has tidied up a scruffy moment.
Countdowns to Kick-Off
They’ve tried to foist this one on us before, but never for the second half too. Whereupon the pathos of such low-watt panto business has only grown. Countdowns are for rockets, surely, not for Jude Bellingham loosely sidefooting the ball all the way back to Jordan Pickford.
Non-Adaptive Stadium Announcers
There’s a huge difference, obviously, between a meaningless consolation goal and a glorious, destiny-defining late winner. But nobody told the PA jockeys at this World Cup who have greeted both of these types of goal, and all other types, as if they were the latter, because… well, goals, right? Football resists this blanket euphoria.
A Game of Four Quarters
To feel the full moral abdication of the odious ‘hydration break’, you possibly needed to experience it on a foreign channel where, on the referee’s signal, the coverage cut without ceremony to commercials. In other countries, they weren’t even pretending that this impatient commercialism was about health. Straight in the bin.
Doing ‘After Review’ Properly
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We were happy to see what has hitherto been a clunky in-stadium moment grow robust and even professional. Indeed, we hereby crown Iván Barton, the official from El Salvador, King of the After Review for giving it some practically operatic welly after sending off Miguel Almirón for speaking behind his hand. And how appropriate: this is how we express ourselves in football – not all weasel-y with our mouths obscured, but full-throated, unimpeded, into a functioning PA system and while breathing from the diaphragm.
Celebrities with Glasses of Wine
Looking at you here, David Beckham. “Does football go better with a light, crisp Chardonnay or with something fuller-bodied offering a longer-lasting finish?”… is the question that no thoroughly engaged football fan is ever asking in the middle of a game, because there is no less wine-adjacent sport than football. Leave this distraction to cricket.
Host Presidents Getting Red Cards Overturned
That blundering oaf really is determined to spoil absolutely everything, isn’t he? Literally everything.
Dissonant Crowd Shots
Archetypal moment: Danny Murphy saying of Austria, “They’ve been poor” just as the cameras cut to a pair of Austrian fans bopping and grinning as if at the declaration of peace after a long war. By all means let television cover fans, but only if they’re reacting to the game, rather than to the sight of themselves being covered. Oh, and fewer babies in ear protectors, too, going forward. It’s good to grow the game, clearly, but what about growing the fan first?
Licence Fee QR Codes
These heat-of-the-action reminders from the BBC of our obligations with regard to actually paying for this entertainment triggered an avalanche of scorn. But why? Broadcasting a World Cup costs a lot of money, even if you elect to keep Micah Richards in a cupboard in Salford for most of it. And strangely, no such opprobrium seemed to be attracted by the naked grift of ITV pausing at least twice per game to try and persuade us all to enter its World Cup prize draw at £5 a throw.
Anyway, crunch the numbers: your £180 fee has worked out at roughly £3 per World Cup match screened live by the BBC, or around 4p per minute of football, not including extra time. Bargain of a lifetime, surely. And that’s before you factor in all the other great output from the BBC in 2026, such as The Pitt. Oh, wait, that was HBO. Actually, I can’t now remember watching anything on the BBC this year apart from the football, but there must have been something. And even if there hasn’t, wasn’t this World Cup enough?
Photograph by Rob Newell/CameraSport via Getty Images