B2B sportsbook supplier BETBY has published a detailed report examining shifts in betting behaviour between the 2022 and 2026 FIFA World Cup tournaments.
The report, titled ’10 World Cup Insights for the Next 10 Months of Football’, is designed to give sportsbook operators a clearer picture of how consumer expectations have evolved.
Beyond presenting raw data, the report poses a central question about what actually sits behind the numbers operators collected during the tournament.
BETBY aims to answer that question across every key layer of engagement, from match-result betting and player props through to sportsbook features, products, and promotional campaigns.
The headline conclusion from the study is straightforward and direct: players have started to interact with football in fundamentally different ways than they did four years ago.
One of the more striking data points shows that only 18.84% of World Cup bets were placed through the dedicated tournament page, suggesting players discovered content through other routes.
Desktop engagement accounted for just 13.14% of overall activity, yet that same channel was responsible for 30.24% of total World Cup turnover, a significant disparity worth examining.
The report also explores what drove an average of x2.96 stake growth, the biggest market shifts affecting player props over the last four years, and what kept bettors engaged between matches.
With the new football season now underway, BETBY believes the insights remain highly relevant and can be used by operators to drive growth across the coming months.
Stefanos Karakidis, Business Development Director at BETBY, offered a candid assessment of how operators approached the tournament overall and where they may have missed opportunities.
“Most operators came out of the World Cup with better numbers, but few could explain why,” said Karakidis, adding that acquisition was treated as the primary lens when it was arguably the least interesting aspect.
“The tournament reached four out of five of our players, yet generated less than half of all bets,” Karakidis continued, noting that the World Cup was everywhere on sportsbooks but was never the whole story.
“That’s why we set out to uncover the insights that many operators might otherwise overlook,” he added, framing the report as an exercise in making sense of outcomes rather than simply celebrating them.
The findings challenge a common assumption in the industry that major tournaments naturally drive concentrated, predictable betting behaviour across dedicated product pages.
BETBY’s report ultimately positions itself as a practical tool, offering operators a data-backed foundation as they look to capitalise on the months of club and international football that follow one of the sport’s biggest events.
