The 2026 FIFA World Cup beginning in June and held partly in the United States will be a boon for sportsbooks in the moment, but not a creator of enduring soccer bettors, peer a report from player-engagement solution firm Optimove released Tuesday.
While, according to the report, the World Cup experiences “steady, habit-driven” betting in the mature European soccer markets and exhibits growth in Latin America, “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.”
In the case of this June 11-July 19 World Cup, which will feature 11 American venues — including the final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. — that means Americans either pivoting back to the second half of the Major League Baseball season, or going dormant until the widely popular National Football League betting season begins with preseason games just a few weeks later.
The theory misses a chance for an immediate test. Major League Soccer will switch to a summer-to-spring schedule in 2027 to coincide with most international leagues.
The Optimove study was based on “select, aggregated monthly data from leading sportsbook brands across Europe, [Latin America] and the United States, covering an average of approximately 9.4 million active players per month between May 2022 and June 2023,” which encapsulated the 2022 World Cup.
Factors that could boost American betting
The report noted, however, forces that could influence stronger soccer betting behavior in Americans.
This World Cup is just the second held since legal sports betting outside of Nevada became a possibility after the fall of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018. Only Nevada, Delaware, and New Jersey had live, legal sports betting markets when the 2018 tournament commenced about a month later in Russia.
The-Optimove-2026-World-Cup-Playbook-for-Sportsbooks-Part-2-v3-2For the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, 32 U.S. jurisdictions had either mobile, retail sports betting or both. That number has swelled to 41, and, crucially, according to Optimove, time zone challenges endemic to the previous two events don’t apply.
“… 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,” according to the report.
While U.S. sportsbooks might experience a boost in customers, claims Optimove, deposit averages are likely to be low and new soccer bettors are unlikely to keep playing without inducements. Meanwhile, in areas with already-strong soccer betting interest, retention and activity should remain steady and strong.
An inspiring run by the U.S. Men’s National Team likely wouldn’t hurt either. The squad is currently 14th in FIFA’s rankings, and drew Group D in the World Cup with Paraguay, Australia, and an as-yet-undetermined opponent from European Play-Off “C,” which includes Kosovo, Romania, Slovakia, and Turkey.
Do Americans take a punt on soccer?
Gleaning exact information about betting tastes in the entire legal U.S. market is impossible because of the disparate ways that state gambling regulators and taxing agencies report data, wrote the study authors. The Colorado regulator is among the few that produce percentage of wager figures by sport, and during the 2022 World Cup, soccer represented 4.9% of wagers. This figure should be taken into the context of that World Cup being played in December — to mitigate Qatar heat — and therefore put it in direct competition with the NFL, and NBA, and college basketball.
In September of 2022, soccer betting comprised 3.7% of all bets placed in Colorado, and trailed off to 3% in the following months. In November 2025, it remained steady at 3.2%.
