World Cup 2026 Betting Tops $50 Billion Before the Final, With U.S. Legal Books Driving the Record

The 2026 FIFA World Cup has already become the biggest betting event in sports history, with global handle estimated at more than $50 billion and as high as $60 billion in regulated turnover. For PSPs and acquirers serving sportsbooks, the important part is not the headline number; it is how much of that volume is flowing through legal U.S. books, live betting, and higher-margin same-game parlays.

1. Macquarie estimates that more than $50 billion has been wagered on the tournament worldwide, which would put World Cup 2026 ahead of Qatar 2022 and even the record Super Bowl. H2 Gambling Capital puts the global regulated turnover even higher, at around $60 billion.
2. The biggest growth engine is the United States, hosting the tournament for the first time in 32 years. Eilers & Krejcik expects legal U.S. sportsbooks to take between $2.82 billion and $4.3 billion on the World Cup, up from barely half a billion during World Cup 2022.
3. That jump is structural, not just hype. Since the last World Cup, the number of U.S. states with legal mobile betting has risen from 19 to 39, and the expansion of the tournament to 48 teams means 104 matches instead of 64. More markets, more sessions, more chances for payment volume to pile up.
4. What matters for operators is hold (the share of each wager that the bookmaker keeps). In football, margin is usually around 5–7%, far below American football. H2 expects a 12.5% hold on this tournament, roughly double the normal level, because bettors have shifted heavily into same-game parlays and in-play bets.
5. Specific operators are already seeing the size of the event. Deutsche Bank estimates FanDuel’s World Cup handle at about $1.3 billion and DraftKings’ at about $1.1 billion. Analysts put gross gaming revenue for the U.S. market from the tournament at $197–387 million, enough to make it one of the five most lucrative legal betting events in U.S. history.

There is also a tax angle, which PSPs and merchants in regulated markets know very well: where betting is legal, the state takes its cut from the bookmaker’s share. In New Jersey, lawmakers went further than the standard setup with bill AB4838 introduced in May.