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Note: Terminology
For clarity and consistency, this report uses the term “football” throughout to refer to the sport also known as “soccer.” Both terms describe the same game; the use of “football” reflects terminology commonly used in certain regions and does not indicate any difference in the sport being analyzed.
The FIFA World Cup is one of the largest global betting events, but its impact on sportsbook performance is neither uniform nor inherently durable. This report analyzes betting behavior before, during, and after the 2022 World Cup across Europe, LATAM, and the United States to understand how global football events influence acquisition, engagement, and retention ahead of the 2026 tournament.
Historically, the World Cup drives sharp, short-term spikes in activity and first-time bettors, but rarely reshapes long-term player loyalty. Mature football betting markets such as Europe show steady, habit-driven engagement with minimal disruption, while LATAM exhibits greater volatility that reflects growth rather than weakness. In contrast, the United States has treated the World Cup as a moment, not a season, with engagement peaking during the tournament and normalizing quickly in favor of domestic sports cycles.
The 2026 World Cup, however, introduces structural conditions that make it mean-ingfully different from prior tournaments. For the first time, the competition will expand to 48 teams, increasing the number of matches, extending the tournament window, and broadening the range of participating nations. In addition, hosting the tournament across the Americas, including the United States, removes many of the time-zone and accessibility barriers that previously limited sustained U.S. engagement with global football.
These factors create a unique opportunity to deepen U.S. exposure to European football and global betting markets. While history suggests that structural change is not guaranteed, the expanded format, extended duration, and geographic proximity of the 2026 World Cup may allow operators to shift U.S. behavior from event-driven spikes toward more sustained engagement, particularly if activation is aligned with the U.S. sports calendar and followed by deliberate post-event nurturing.
Across all regions, mega-events ultimately reveal market maturity rather than erase regional differences. Acquisition surges often come with lower average deposits, and reactivation spikes tend to fade without continued engagement strategies. Durable retention remains strongest where football betting is already embedded into regular behavior.
As the industry approaches the 2026 World Cup, operators face a strategic choice: treat the tournament as a short-term volume accelerator or use its unique structure as an inflection point to build lasting, region-specific engagement.
The outcome will be determined not during the tournament itself, but by how effectively operators prepare before it and invest after it.
This analysis is based on select, aggregated monthly data from leading sports-book brands across Europe, LATAM, and the United States, covering an average of approximately 9.4 million active players per month between May 2022 and June 2023. The time period was before, during, and after the 2022 FIFA World Cup. All insights are based on regional-level averages, enabling consistent comparison across markets.
Key Takeaways
The World Cup creates spikes - not loyalty
Across regions, the tournament drives short-term engagement and acquisition but rarely reshapes long-term player loyalty
Retention is earned before the event, not during it
High-intensity bettors remain loyal regardless of the World Cup, while casual players are far less likely to remain active over time
LATAM’s volatility signals growth, not weakness
The sharp swings in activity and retention reflect a market still forming habits, where global events can temporarily reshape behavior
The U.S. reacts to moments, not tournaments
World Cup engagement in the U.S. is real but short-lived, peaking quickly before giving way to stronger local sports cycles, with little lasting retention effect
Mega-events reveal market maturity
Rather than leveling markets, the World Cup amplified existing structural differences between regions
Across regions, first-time depositor behavior around the World Cup showed distinctly different patterns. LATAM demonstrated the strongest uplift, driven by its deeply rooted football culture and the tournament’s outsized influence on new player acquisition. Europe showed a more moderate and predictable increase during the event, reflecting a mature market where soccer betting is already part of the regular cycle. In contrast, the US remained largely unaffected by the World Cup, with no meaningful lift during November–December; instead, its major spike appeared in January, aligned with NFL playoffs rather than global football.
These differences highlight why regional segmentation is essential when evaluat-ing mega-event performance.
During major global events like the World Cup, growth in player volumes often comes at the expense of average deposit size.
As new bettors enter the market, they typically start with smaller and more cautious deposits. This temporarily decreases the average monthly deposit per player. This effect is most pronounced in LATAM, where football-driven acquisition is especially strong and the World Cup triggers a surge of low-stakes onboarding. Europe shows a milder version of this dynamic, reflecting a more mature betting market with a relatively stable deposit baseline.
The US follows a different pattern altogether. With football playing a limited role in acquisition, deposit averages dip slightly during the World Cup months but rebound quickly and even rise - once the NFL playoffs (professional U.S. football) begin.
Overall, these trends highlight the trade-off inherent in mega-events: attracting large numbers of new players often means lower short-term value per player, with long-term impact depending on how successfully those players are nurtured post-event.
Reactivation behavior during the World Cup reveals clear regional differences in how global sports events re-engage inactive players.
In Europe, reactivation remains relatively stable throughout the period, with only modest fluctuations during the tournament itself. This suggests a mature market where player reactivation is driven more by habitual engagement than by one-off global events.
LATAM shows slightly more movement, with a mild uplift during the World Cup months, but without sharp spikes or sustained post-event momentum. Reactiva-tion here appears responsive to major football moments, yet still anchored in an underlying, steady engagement cycle rather than short-lived surges.
The U.S. stands out with a distinctly different pattern (see more in the special U.S. section of this report) Reactivation rises sharply during the World Cup, peaking in November–December, but drops quickly once the tournament ends. This short-lived spike indicates that while the World Cup can successfully re-engage previously inactive players, it does not create lasting reactivation on its own.
Subsequent activity aligns more closely with the U.S. sports calendar - particularly NFL-driven periods, reinforcing that local sports, rather than global tournaments, remain the primary reactivation drivers in this market.
Summary: Considering all regions covered in this report, these patterns highlight an important distinction: global events like the World Cup can spark reactivation across regions, but the durability of that impact depends heavily on market maturity and the dominance of local sports ecosystems.
Retention trends further emphasize the differences between regions during the World Cup period.
In Europe, retention remains consistently high throughout the year, with only minor fluctuations during the tournament months. Even at peak event periods, player loy-alty appears largely unaffected, reinforcing that it is a mature, habit-driven betting base.
LATAM players show slightly higher volatility than Europe. Retention increases to-ward the World Cup but drops more noticeably in the months immediately follow-ing the event, suggesting that while the tournament succeeds in reactivating and engaging players, not all of that activity translates into sustained retention.
The U.S. follows a distinctly different pattern. Retention peaks sharply during the World Cup in December, followed by a pronounced decline in January. This be-havior aligns with earlier acquisition and deposit trends, indicating that U.S. player loyalty is far more event-driven and highly responsive to short-term excitement and promotions, but less durable once the event concludes.
Summary: Considering all regions covered in this report, these patterns reinforce a consistent theme across key performance indicator (KPIs): the World Cup amplifies engagement across regions. But engagement only translates into stable, long-term retention in markets with established betting habits like Europe.
As noted, The United States differs structurally from mature European football bet-ting markets. Historically, soccer has not been a primary betting sport in the U.S., and engagement tends to follow the domestic sports calendar more than global tournaments. Established sports betting events in the U.S. are the National Football League (especially the Super Bowl), March Madness, NBA playoffs, World Series, and special annual events like The Kentucky Derby, and College football rivalry games.
Methodology: To help operators anticipate U.S. trends for the 2026 World Cup, we have analyzed betting trends in the U.S. in the previous 2022 World Cup and have analyzed trends in the 2025 U.S. football (soccer). In 2025, the MLS season (soccer/ football) in the U.S. ran from; Start: February 22, 2025, to End (Decision Day): October 18, 2025.
Across major U.S. sportsbook operators, comparing the month prior to the 2022 World Cup with the tournament month, this report analyzed a representative sam-ple of more than 500,000 bettors, who placed up to 18 million bets. In the sample, the following results were revealed:
Despite this surge, U.S. retention and reactivation declined rapidly after the tourna-ment, producing a sharp spike-and-drop pattern on the overlay.
During May 11–June 10, 2025; primarily an off-season period (soccer/football) across the globe:
Soccer betting activity nearly matched U.S. World Cup participation levels from 2022 and exceed World Cup bet volumes from three years earlier, indicating that soccer betting is increasingly filling seasonal gaps in the U.S. sports calendar.
U.S. versus Europe and LATAM
Compared with Europe and Latin America, the U.S. results reveal:
Strategic Implications for Operators
In the United States:
The 2026 World Cup: Global Expansion, Conditional Impact
The 2026 World Cup introduces unprecedented global conditions:
These factors are likely to increase global betting volume. However, historical data suggests that structural change is not guaranteed. Durable impact will depend on how effectively operators convert event-driven engagement into sustained region-al behavior.
Soccer betting is global, but bettor behavior is regional. The World Cup amplifies existing market dynamics rather than reshaping them uniformly.
As the industry approaches the 2026 World Cup, operators worldwide face a clear choice: treat the tournament as a short-term volume spike or use it as a strategic moment to build lasting engagement aligned with regional market realities.
