An average NFL broadcast runs approximately 3 hours and 12 minutes. Of that, the ball is in play for about 11 minutes. Commercial breaks consume roughly 25 minutes. The remaining time — over two hours — is filled with timeouts, replay reviews, huddles, penalty discussions, injury stoppages, two-minute warnings, challenges, measurement checks, and the slow procedural rhythms of a game that stops and starts more than any other major sport.

For streaming platforms, this creates an extraordinary monetization gap. Traditional ad insertion fills the scheduled commercial breaks. But the natural stoppages between those breaks — the moments when viewers are still watching, still engaged, still waiting for the next play — are almost entirely unmonetized.

This guide quantifies the unmonetized inventory in live sports, explains why traditional ad insertion misses it, and outlines how nonlinear ad formats and event-triggered delivery are turning dead air into premium revenue.

Quantifying the Gap

The monetization gap in live sports isn't hypothetical. It's measurable, significant, and consistent across every major sport.

NFL

An NFL game averages 20-25 designated commercial breaks, totaling approximately 50 minutes of ad time across the broadcast. But between those scheduled breaks, there are roughly 75-100 additional stoppages — timeouts (each team gets six per game), two-minute warnings, challenges, injury timeouts, measurement stops, and the 40-second play clock between every snap. Each of these stoppages ranges from 15 seconds to several minutes.

Conservative estimates suggest 40+ minutes of viewer attention during non-commercial stoppages that generate zero ad revenue in a typical streaming environment.

NBA

NBA games feature frequent stoppages for free throws, timeouts (14 per game for both teams combined), replay reviews, and quarter breaks. A typical NBA broadcast runs about 2.5 hours, with the ball in active play for approximately 48 minutes (the length of the game clock). Commercial breaks account for roughly 20 minutes. The remaining 82 minutes includes a mix of active gameplay and stoppages, with 30+ minutes of non-commercial downtime.

MLB

Baseball is perhaps the most extreme case. The average MLB game in 2024 ran about 2 hours and 38 minutes (down from pre-pitch clock averages). Active play — pitches, hits, fielding — accounts for roughly 18 minutes. Between pitches, between innings, during mound visits, pitching changes, and replay reviews, there are extended periods where the camera is on the field but nothing is happening. The pitch clock has reduced some dead time but created new, predictable micro-breaks that are ideal for non-disruptive ad formats.

NHL

Hockey has fewer natural stoppages than other major sports, but icing calls, offsides, penalties, fights, and the time between faceoff setups still create 20+ minutes of non-commercial attention per game. The intermissions between periods are heavily commercialized, but the in-period stoppages are undermonetized.

Soccer / Football

Soccer's continuous play structure means fewer stoppages, but injury time, substitutions, VAR reviews, and the natural rhythm of goal kicks and throw-ins create micro-moments that nonlinear formats can monetize without disrupting the viewing experience.

Why Traditional Ad Insertion Misses This Inventory

The problem isn't that streaming platforms are unaware of these moments. It's that their ad insertion infrastructure wasn't designed to exploit them.

Predetermined Break Points

Traditional ad insertion — both SSAI and CSAI — requires break points to be defined in advance or signaled through SCTE markers in the video stream. Scheduled commercial breaks have SCTE markers. Natural game stoppages — a timeout called by a coach, a player injury, a replay challenge — do not. If the ad insertion system can only respond to SCTE markers, it's blind to the majority of monetizable moments.

Full-Screen Requirement

Traditional ad insertion assumes a full-screen takeover — the video stops, the ad plays, the video resumes. This model works for scheduled commercial breaks but is wildly inappropriate for a 30-second timeout in the middle of a drive. Viewers would revolt if every coach's timeout triggered a full-screen commercial. The format doesn't match the moment.

Ad Pod Rigidity

Most ad insertion systems work in "pods" — fixed-length groups of ads (typically 2-4 spots totaling 60-120 seconds). But natural game stoppages vary wildly in length. A pitching change might take 3 minutes. A timeout might last 30 seconds. A replay review could be anywhere from 20 seconds to 3 minutes. Ad pods can't flex to fit variable-length stoppages.

Latency

Even in SGAI-enabled systems, there's a minimum time required to run an auction, select a creative, and begin rendering an ad. For scheduled breaks, this latency is invisible because the system knows the break is coming. For unscheduled stoppages, the system needs to detect the event, assess the expected duration, and begin ad delivery in near-real-time — a capability that requires event-triggered architecture.

Nonlinear Formats: The Solution Set

The key to monetizing natural stoppages is nonlinear ad formats — ad experiences that don't require full-screen takeover and can adapt to variable-length moments.

Overlays

Transparent ad units that render on top of the video stream without pausing or replacing the content. During a timeout, an overlay can display a sponsor message, a product promotion, or an interactive element while the viewer continues to see the field, court, or rink. The video player maintains constant size, and the overlay sits in a designated area of the screen.

Overlays are the highest-volume nonlinear format because they can activate during virtually any stoppage without disrupting the viewing experience.

L-Bars

The video feed shrinks to one quadrant of the screen while ad content fills the remaining L-shaped area. L-bars are more attention-commanding than simple overlays but less disruptive than full-screen takeovers. They work well for stoppages of 15-60 seconds — long enough to register but short enough that a full commercial would feel excessive.

Picture-in-Picture (PiP)

The video feed shrinks to a small window while ad content occupies the majority of the screen. PiP is the most aggressive nonlinear format — it's close to a full-screen takeover but maintains the live feed, which is critical during moments when play could resume unexpectedly (like a timeout that ends early).

Squeezebacks

The video feed compresses to make room for ad content alongside it. IAB Tech Lab's 2025-2026 CTV Ad Portfolio includes squeezebacks as a standardized format, reflecting their growing adoption across streaming platforms. Squeezebacks work particularly well in sports because the compressed video feed keeps the game visible while the ad occupies meaningful screen real estate.

Pause Ads

Ads that activate when the viewer pauses playback. While not directly tied to game events, pause ads monetize a common viewer behavior (pausing to grab food, answer the door, check a notification) that's otherwise a dead zone. Research shows 81% of viewers pause content at some point during viewing, and pause ads deliver a 34% lift in unaided recall because they have 100% share of voice during the pause.

The Event Trigger Engine

Unlocking nonlinear ad inventory at scale requires an Event Trigger Engine — a real-time system that ingests live game data, identifies monetizable moments, selects the appropriate ad format, and activates delivery within seconds.

The trigger engine needs to perform several functions simultaneously:

Event detection. Process live game data feeds (play-by-play, game clock, official stoppages, player tracking) and identify events that create ad opportunities. A timeout is detected within 1-2 seconds of the official signal.

Duration estimation. Estimate how long the stoppage will last based on the event type and game context. A full timeout is typically 60-75 seconds. A TV timeout is 90-120 seconds. An injury stoppage is variable. The estimated duration determines which ad format and creative length are appropriate.

Format selection. Choose the nonlinear format that matches the moment. A brief stoppage gets an overlay. A longer timeout might warrant an L-bar or PiP. A replay review with uncertain duration gets an overlay that can persist indefinitely.

Programmatic activation. Signal the ad marketplace to run an auction for the specific impression, including contextual signals (event type, game state, player involved) that enable intelligent bidding.

Graceful exit. Monitor the live feed for signals that play is resuming and smoothly transition the ad unit off-screen before the action starts. Nothing kills the viewer experience faster than a nonlinear ad lingering on screen during a live play.

The Revenue Impact

The revenue potential of monetizing natural stoppages is significant. Consider a simplified model:

A three-hour NFL broadcast with 40 minutes of unmonetized stoppages, monetized at conservative nonlinear ad CPMs, represents meaningful incremental revenue per game. Scale that across a 272-game regular season (plus playoffs), and the total industry opportunity is in the hundreds of millions annually — for the NFL alone.

Extend the model to the NBA (1,230 regular season games), MLB (2,430 games), NHL (1,312 games), MLS (510+ games), and international soccer (thousands of matches), and the total addressable inventory of natural game stoppages is enormous.

The platforms that build the infrastructure to monetize these moments — event detection, nonlinear rendering, programmatic activation — will capture revenue that currently flows to no one.

Getting Started

For streaming platforms evaluating this opportunity, the path forward involves three capabilities:

Real-time data integration. Connect to live game data feeds that provide play-by-play, event, and game state information with low enough latency to trigger ad experiences before the moment passes.

Nonlinear rendering infrastructure. Deploy an overlay SDK that can render transparent, non-disruptive ad units across all devices (mobile, web, CTV) without interrupting the video stream.

Event-triggered ad serving. Build or adopt an event trigger engine that connects game events to ad activation, including programmatic auction integration for real-time demand.

The 40+ unmonetized minutes are there in every game, every broadcast, every season. The only question is whether your platform is built to capture them.