As fans prepare to watch, travel, bet and spend at unprecedented scale, industry leaders warn the World Cup will expose every weakness in the digital fan journey
When the 2026 FIFA World Cup begins across the US, Canada and Mexico, it will arrive as the most expansive, most digital and most commercially consequential tournament ever staged.
A 48‑team format, three‑nation hosting model and a fully regulated North American betting landscape will collide with a fanbase which consumes sport in real time, on mobile, and across multiple digital touchpoints. The scale alone is arguably unprecedented, but so is the behaviour surrounding it: fans will watch, travel, bet, game, spend and share at levels the industry has never had to support simultaneously.
This convergence is creating a rare moment of clarity across the sports ecosystem. Whether you speak to a global broadcaster, a payments provider or an operator‑side technologist, the message is that the the World Cup will be won or lost on friction.
Shay Segev, CEO of DAZN, captures the shift from the content side. His ambition is to turn DAZN into the “Spotify of sport,” a single platform where fans can watch live matches, browse highlights, check stats, join communities and, if they choose, place a bet — all without leaving the environment.
“Our vision in DAZN is that we want every customer around the world to use DAZN as the go‑to, as the destination platform for sport,” he says. For Segev, fragmentation is the enemy. Fans shouldn’t need six or seven apps to follow their team, talk to friends, buy tickets or place a wager.
“If you think about sport, you want to watch live content, you want to watch news, you want to get pictures, you want real‑time stats, you want communities and social, everything in one destination.”
Betting during the tournament
That expectation of seamlessness is mirrored in how fans plan to bet. Paysafe’s latest research shows 60% of consumers intend to place bets online during the World Cup, and nearly one in five will be doing so for the first time. Many of these new bettors will arrive with little patience for friction.
A striking 44% say they have abandoned a bet because their preferred payment method wasn’t available, and 88% would switch brands after a poor payment experience. Instant payouts now sit just behind brand trust as the most important factor in choosing a sportsbook; fans expect the same ease they experience in music, retail and streaming, and they expect it everywhere.
Zakary Cutler, who leads global gaming at Paysafe, sees the operational consequences of that expectation every day. “Payments is really the first interaction you’re going to have with these people,” he says. “If you enter your debit or credit card and it just fails… you’ve probably lost that person.”
He describes a funnel where operators spend heavily to acquire customers, only to lose them at the final step because the cashier doesn’t support the right local method. “You’ve already spent the money on the marketing… you don’t get that back,” he says.
The World Cup will magnify this pressure. Fans overwhelmingly bet in the moment – Paysafe’s research shows 64% plan to place wagers on the day of the game, and many will do so minutes before kick‑off or during the match itself. That creates intense spikes in traffic, deposits and withdrawals. Cutler warns that many operators underestimate the volume: “A lot of new entrants… have no idea what it looks like at 12pm in America on NFL Sunday.”
Localisation adds another layer of complexity. Payment preferences vary dramatically across markets: Pix dominates in Brazil, Interac e‑Transfer in Canada, Venmo in the US, and eCash remains essential for unbanked or underbanked players across Latin America. Fans travelling to host cities will bring those expectations with them.
A one‑size‑fits‑all approach is no longer viable; the platforms that succeed will be those that understand the nuances of each market and build for them.
Echoed in illegal streaming
Segev’s comments on piracy echo the same theme from a different angle. He argues the way to beat illegal streams is not through enforcement alone, but through superior user experience. “What solved [music] piracy was actually the user experience,” he says, pointing to Spotify’s convenience as the turning point. DAZN’s strategy is to make the legal experience so good – personalised, interactive, frictionless – that piracy becomes the inferior option.
The same logic applies to betting: if the official route is slow, clunky or restrictive, fans will simply go elsewhere.
The 2026 World Cup will expose every weakness in the fan journey – slow payouts, missing local payment methods, fragile infrastructure, fragmented platforms – and reward the companies that remove friction at every touchpoint.
