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An inside look at how sportsbook operators should approach acquisition
May 21, 2026
By Lewis Spice, Co-Founder & Growth Director at Finovation Media
The 2026 World Cup is already being framed as another “once in a generation” acquisition opportunity for sportsbooks, casinos and betting brands globally.
And it is.
But after spending years working both at and alongside global operators across regulated and emerging markets, one thing has become increasingly obvious:
Most media buying strategies during major tournaments still massively oversimplify bettor behaviour.
Too much planning still revolves around broad audience assumptions:
“Football fans will be active.”
“Traffic volumes will increase.”
“CPAs will go up.”
“Let’s increase spend during the tournament.”
That’s not strategy.
That’s just spending more money during a sporting event.
Operators that fully capitalise on big events aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets.
They’re the ones who understand timing, pacing, intent and second-screen behaviour better than everyone else.
One of the biggest mistakes I still see across the industry is treating the World Cup as one single acquisition window.
It isn’t.
The tournament is made up of hundreds of micro-moments where bettor psychology changes dramatically.
Group stages behave differently to knockouts.
Underdog games behave differently to favourites.
Penalty shootouts create entirely different engagement patterns to standard match flow.
Live odds movement changes click intent in real time.
Certain markets spike before kick-off.
Others spike after goals, VAR reviews or momentum swings.
The idea that you can run relatively static World Cup betting campaigns across a tournament of this scale and maximise efficiency is becoming increasingly outdated.
Especially as sportsbook operators become more aggressive with promotional spend, sponsorship activations and paid media competition.
For years, programmatic advertising for sportsbooks and wider iGaming marketing strategies were often positioned primarily as awareness channels.
That’s changing rapidly.
The real shift now is towards performance-centric programmatic activation built around relevance and intent.
Not simply:
But instead:
This is where a lot of sportsbook marketing strategy still falls behind.
Many media strategies still focus heavily on where ads appear.
Far fewer focus deeply enough on when they appear.
And timing is increasingly becoming the difference between average performance and elite sports betting user acquisition efficiency.
The operators who perform strongest during this tournament likely won’t just be the ones increasing budgets.
They’ll be the ones operationally prepared to react faster than competitors.
That means:
Because bettor intent during major tournaments is rarely linear.
It spikes.
It crashes.
It shifts emotionally.
It changes by market.
It changes by scoreline.
It changes by time of day.
And increasingly, sports betting media buying performance depends on how quickly campaigns can adapt to those changes.
One thing I’ve learned working with operators globally is that many teams still become reactive during tournaments instead of proactive before them.
That creates problems:
By the time many brands realise performance is slipping, competitors have already captured audience attention and built momentum.
The operators who historically come out strongest are the ones who treat tournaments like a constantly evolving trading environment rather than a fixed media plan.
This is another uncomfortable conversation the industry probably needs to have more often.
Not all cheap CPAs are good CPAs.
During major tournaments, it becomes very easy to optimise purely towards short-term acquisition numbers without understanding:
Some of the best-performing campaigns I’ve seen weren’t necessarily the cheapest on paper.
They were the ones acquiring higher-value bettors during moments of genuine intent.
That distinction matters massively.
Especially during tournaments where acquisition volumes can distort perceived efficiency.
The next evolution of sports betting advertising is likely going to become increasingly centred around:
Not simply buying larger volumes of inventory.
The World Cup creates one of the most emotionally reactive digital environments in global sport.
Operators that understand how to align media buying with those behavioural shifts will have a significant competitive advantage over the next few years.
And honestly, I think we’re still only scratching the surface of what’s possible here.
The 2026 World Cup is going to be one of the most competitive acquisition environments the industry has ever seen.
Budgets will increase.
Noise will increase.
CPMs will rise.
Every operator will try to own attention.
But attention alone isn’t enough anymore.
The real opportunity sits in understanding when intent peaks, why it peaks, and how quickly you can activate around it.
That’s where modern sportsbook media buying is heading.
And the operators who understand that early are likely going to dominate the next generation of tournament acquisition.
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