The FIFA World Cup is a cultural phenomenon. It draws viewers from across the globe, many of whom are not traditional football fans or regular bettors. It taps into national pride like no other sporting event and with this year’s expanded format of 48 teams instead of 32, the 2026 World Cup is expected to be the most viewed tournament ever, and the biggest ever for sportsbooks.

The World Cup always drives a spike in sportsbook activity and the last tournament in Qatar in 2022 attracted an audience of over five billion people across all platforms.

With this year’s tournament featuring matches played across the United States, Canada and Mexico, it gives operators the opportunity to tap into the growing interest in ‘soccer’ in the US and Canada, and to expand their reach in South America due to viewer friendly match times.

A selection of the industry’s leading operators and suppliers speak to Gaming Intelligence about the importance of the tournament from a customer acquisition and engagement perspective and explain what the sportsbooks have planned for what is expected to be their biggest betting event.

In part three of our sportsbook supplier series, we hear from OpenBet and Playtech.

What the sportsbook suppliers say

OpenBet

OpenBet has been powering some of the world’s largest operators through every major tournament for nearly 30 years and sees the FIFA World Cup as the single biggest global driver of sportsbook engagement.

“What makes the 2026 World Cup unique is the intensity of demand. Unlike domestic leagues that spread engagement across hundreds of fixtures, the World Cup condenses global attention into a handful of daily matches,” says OpenBet’s chief business development officer, Jason Ayton.

“This creates enormous pressure on operators to deliver flawless uptime and differentiated experiences precisely when demand peaks, forcing every part of the stack – trading, risk, content delivery, payments – to work seamlessly. For operators, it’s a once-every-four-years inflection point where product strategy becomes highly visible and commercial outcomes are magnified. We’ve already begun preparation: conducting simulations, stress scenarios, and capacity modelling to validate scale ahead of record traffic.”

Ayton notes that the tournament draws a broader, narrative-driven recreational audience that engages more with player-centric and story-driven markets: shots, fouls, goals, cards, and player props.

OpenBet processed more than 200 million bets on the 2022 tournament and BetBuilder volumes exceeded five times what was measured during Euro 2020, with over 50% of stakes from US bettors. This demonstrates how US audiences accustomed to same-game parlays increasingly engage with this format in ‘soccer’.

“US fixtures alone saw over 12 million bets representing $100 million in stakes,” says Ayton. “We expect this trajectory to accelerate with World Cup 2026 hosting across the US, Canada, and Mexico.

“During major events, BetBuilder turnover can rise from around 5% of stakes to more than 20%, reflecting increased demand for granular, personalised markets,” he explains. “Our trading team notes a clear shift away from accumulator-driven behaviour toward focused single-match engagement with sharp spikes in Player Prop activity.”

“Since the last World Cup our strategy has evolved into a modular, mobile-first ecosystem that surfaces the most relevant bet at the precise moment a bettor is ready to act. A major advancement is Trending BetBuilder, developed in partnership with Checkd Dev, which automatically highlights contextual bets based on live momentum, player form, and narrative trends using Opta data and in-play models.

“This means that an operator with a Belgian audience can foreground a De Bruyne + Trossard shots-on-target combination, while an Austrian sportsbook promotes a match result bundled with a Sabitzer fouls market.

“Alongside this, we have expanded in-play depth and prioritised player markets, supported by enhanced feeds from providers including Lacerta,” Ayton adds. “Another key development is our Protect suite, featuring OpenBet Locator and Neccton responsible gaming technology. With millions of fans arriving in North America during the tournament, operators need protection from risks presented by increased player volumes, and they also need to protect a rapidly evolving player-base. Our recent integration with Fanatics Sportsbook across 23 US markets validates this offering’s quality.”

Alongside the opportunities the tournament presents for sportsbooks in North and South America, there are also challenges for European sportsbooks, where matches will often be late in the evening or early morning for European audiences.

Ayton says the commercial challenge for European operators will be maintaining engagement during long windows between matches.

“Our Trading System acts as a unified pricing and content aggregation layer, enabling operators to offer round-the-clock market depth across multiple sports, from multiple providers, through a single integration. This gives seamless access to specialist feeds from providers such as TxODDS and nVenue, enabling deeper in-play BetBuilder and player prop markets across premium sports that align better with European time zones, including Wimbledon tennis, UFC, and major cycling events., cycling events and UFC,” he explains.

“Because these feeds are standardised inside the Trading System, operators gain 24/7 continuity without additional technical overhead, the same architecture and workflows across World Cup fixtures and the broader sports calendar. Coupled with Opta-powered BetBuilder modelling, this ensures stable, data-rich coverage across all major time zones.”

Ayton adds: “The reverse is arguably true in Australia, where the World Cup schedule aligns well with local viewing habits. Many fixtures fall into Australian daytime and early evening windows, allowing operators to capitalise on peak engagement while running AFL and NRL markets in parallel. This creates sustained, high-quality betting demand across both international football and core domestic codes, without forcing operators to compromise coverage or operational focus.”

Playtech

“The FIFA World Cup is the most impactful event for our sports betting business,” says Pedro Extremera, Playtech’s regional director for Iberia & Latin America. “It attracts not only regular bettors but also casual fans who rarely engage outside such tournaments. For us, it represents a peak period for acquisition and engagement.

“The World Cup is a cultural phenomenon, not just a sporting event. Therefore, its impact from a fan participation perspective is difficult to overstate. If we use the 2022 World Cup as an example, active player numbers surged during the tournament and bettors’ average stakes increase by 25%, with notably strong demand in pre-game markets, which accounted for 70% of all wagers.

“There remained a notable demand for in-play bets over the course of the 2022 World Cup, which made up 30% of wagers placed. However, the competition also poses a retention challenge, with bettor activity often decreasing once a customer’s national team had been eliminated.

“When analysing the most effective strategies for operators to deploy during an event the size of the World Cup, our data shows that 95% of turnover concentrated on early payout markets. Such markets not only boast higher margins than traditional full-time result markets, but also retain existing customers, attract new ones and improve long-term profitability.”

“The competition acts as a gateway for new customers who are drawn by the excitement and global visibility of the tournament,” Extremera adds. “Our data shows acquisition rates during the World Cup can be 2–3 times higher than during regular league seasons. Sporting events of this magnitude also present us with an opportunity to convert more casual fans into long-term bettors via tailored retention strategies.

“Our strategy for this World Cup builds on previous tournaments but reflects how the market and player expectations have evolved. We’ve placed a strong focus on personalisation, using advanced data and AI to deliver experiences that feel relevant and timely for every customer. At the same time, we’ve strengthened cross-channel engagement to create a seamless journey across apps, social platforms, and web, ensuring fans can interact in real time wherever they are.

“There are several product enhancements we are preparing to roll out ahead of the World Cup that we anticipate will resonate strongly with players in multiple international markets,” he adds. “One of Playtech’s standout World Cup features comes in the form of ‘Super Sub’ – where wagers dependent on the performance of individual players remain in-play even after substitutions.

“Users can expect to benefit from another new feature in ‘Optimised Settlement’, which allows operators to pay out on certain wagers that don’t depend on final outcome, before the full-time whistle has been blown. Alongside strengthening our already extensive player market proposition list, Playtech also plans to improve its bet builder offering with Bet Builder +, ensuring users have the ability to combine events across multiple fixtures into the same bet builder.”

Part 1 – FIFA World Cup: Sportradar and Kambi offer perspectives

Part 2 – FIFA World Cup: Altenar and Genius Sports offer perspectives