As the FIFA 2026 World Cup draws nearer, operators are preparing for a record-breaking surge in bets, with some estimates expecting over US$150 billion (£112.6bn) in global wagers, many of which will be placed by first-time bettors ripe for retention.
But not every operator will win a share of the revenue. And not every operator will pursue the right retention strategies to convert the millions of inaugural bettors into returning customers.
To explore the opportunity and help guide operational priorities and strategies, iGamingFuture interviewed Filippo Celleno, Product Owner at B2B football odds specialists WSF Odds, to get his take on how operators can best prepare for the world’s biggest single sport betting event – and explain what their top priorities should be.
Whether you’re in the sports betting business or not, this is an interview you do not want to miss.
Read on.
The upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup is expected to generate record global betting engagement. If an operator wants to stand out, what should they focus on first? More markets, better pricing logic, or stronger product control?
“If I had to put them in order, I would start with product control.
“More markets matter, and pricing matters even more at the World Cup scale, but neither helps much if the operator cannot decide what to show, to whom, with what margin and under which logic.
“During a tournament like this, you do not need a bigger list for the sake of it.
“You need the ability to shape the offer properly. That means controlling visibility, player coverage, margin, expected value and the depth of odds exposed across different matches and customer segments.
“Once that is in place, better pricing logic becomes the next priority, because World Cup traffic is very unforgiving. If your numbers are generic, copied from the same market view everyone else is using, or too slow to react, you lose the chance to look different.
“After that, more markets become valuable. But only if they are markets the operator can actually surface and manage well.”
With the 2026 FIFA World Cup set to drive a huge betting volume, what tends to get exposed in an operator’s product and pricing setup at that scale?
“The first is data latency. During a regular league Saturday, a slow feed is an inconvenience. During a World Cup match with ten times the handle and far fewer events for bettors to focus on, that same latency becomes a direct cost.
“You get misspriced live markets, you get picked off and you spend the following week explaining the numbers to management.
“The second is offer depth. A lot of operators have added player props to their bet builders over the past two-years, but many of those props are thin – three or four markets per player, no substitution logic, nothing for the long tail.
“It is much harder to look competitive when users arrive expecting player props, goalscorers, team and match props, live options and fast updates across a huge number of matches.”
A lot of sportsbook teams still feel safer when their odds look close to the market, or when they can point to numbers already used by bigger brands. Why do you think that mindset is so common? And where does it start to fail?
“It is completely understandable. If your odds look close to the wider market, it is easier internally to say, ‘we are in line’. That gives product teams, traders and decision-makers a sense of safety, especially when they are under pressure from large stakeholders.
“Where it fails is that it confuses comfort with accuracy.
“Copying the market does not mean your pricing is correct. It means your pricing matches the consensus, and the consensus can be wrong for many reasons.
“Different client bases across bookmakers, different data definitions and the nature of younger, more volatile markets like props, all play into that.
“At WSF Odds, we build our models from live data, not from scraping competitors’ feeds. That means our numbers sometimes land differently from what the market shows.
“But different does not mean wrong. Four-years of live production with major bookmakers is proof of that.”
Many operators struggle to convert the surge of tournament traffic into long-term customer value. How can WSF Odds help operators turn World Cup-driven acquisition into long-term retention?
“Tournament traffic only becomes retention when the user finds a reason to come back after the headline event ends.
“Our role in that is to help operators build a football product that has enough depth and frequency to stay interesting beyond the World Cup.
“That means a wider set of player props, team and match props, goalscorer markets and live betting options that keep giving users something to do during the game, not just before kick-off.
“It also helps that our product is not limited to one competition. Operators need a way to carry user behaviour from the World Cup into domestic leagues, European competitions and the rest of the football calendar.
“If the product experience drops sharply after the tournament, retention drops with it. If the logic stays consistent across competitions and market types, the handover is much stronger.
“So the job is to make sure the bettor who arrived for Mbappé or Bellingham during the World Cup can still find a reason to bet when the calendar shifts back to league football.”
Over the next five-years, how will football betting change, and how can WSF Odds help operators stay competitive?
“Football betting will keep moving away from a product built mostly around match outcomes and toward a product built around how teams win and what players did to make that happen.
“The focus will shift further from just the final result to actions like shots, passes, tackles, cards, assists and goalscorer markets.
“Fans already follow football that way and betting will keep moving with that behaviour. The interest will be less about just who won and more about how they won.
“That will put pressure on operators with a thin props menu. To stay competitive, they will need deeper player and match markets, stronger live coverage and pricing they can trust.
“Our role is to keep giving operators a football props product they can build around. More depth. More control. And a setup that works in live production.”
Editor’s Note:
The pitch will not be the only World Cup battleground as betting operators compete fiercely for their share of what is set to be a record-breaking surge in betting volume. But scale alone will not determine the winners.
As Filippo highlights, the operators best positioned to surge and maintain are not necessarily those with the most markets or the tightest odds – but those with the strongest product control.
He asserts that in a high-pressure, high-volume environment like the World Cup, the ability to decide what to show and to whom is the priority. After this, operators can focus on pricing and markets.
Beyond capturing World Cup bets, the tournament also represents a huge opportunity for retention, but how can operators turn this billion-dollar opportunity into a long-term strategy?
According to Filippo, it’s all about providing a reason to return.
As he asserts: “Our role in that is to help operators build a football product that has enough depth and frequency to stay interesting beyond the World Cup.”
