World Cup Betting Fever?

As anticipation builds for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the tournament is once again set to capture global attention, not only among fans, but also across the rapidly expanding sports betting market. In recent years, the normalization legalization of online betting platforms have fueled a steady rise in sports betting worldwide, turning major events like the World Cup into billion-dollar opportunities for the betting industry.

A recent survey from Statista Consumer Insights highlights how attitudes towards betting differ across markets. In the UK, where betting has long been deeply embedded in sports culture, a relatively large share of respondents say they are likely to place bets on World Cup matches. Compared to the UK, respondents from the U.S. and Germany were slightly less enthusiastic about putting down a wager, with Germans particularly reserved. These differences point to varying levels of market maturity, and suggest that while betting interest is growing internationally, the UK remains at the forefront of this trend.

While sports betting has long been legal in the UK, this hasn’t always been the case in the U.S. and Germany. In the U.S., sports betting was effectively prohibited at the federal level under the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA). This only changed in 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law, allowing individual states to legalize and regulate sports betting, which many have done since then. In Germany, the legal status of sports betting was clarified in 2021, when federal legislation established a regulatory framework for legal online sports betting.