Matt Barker, Senior Business Development Manager, shares how African operators can use the 2026 World Cup to drive differentiation, engagement and growth.
The 2026 World Cup promises to be a tournament full of storylines, and nowhere more so than in Africa.
I’m fancying Morocco to follow-up 2022’s semi-final and the AFCON final with another strong showing (more on my top picks later). With 40 extra games and ten African teams in action, there’s a huge opportunity for African sportsbooks to grow engagement.
Some of the African operators I speak to are excited about the tournament but are still reliant on casino and crash games to drive turnover. The simple truth is this type of offering is fast becoming commoditised. The experience is the same no matter where you’re betting.
The World Cup is a rare chance to break that cycle, to build real differentiation, retain players for the long term, and grow profit margin in the process.
Having spent the last couple of years working with African sportsbooks, I’ve seen first-hand how operators across the continent prepare for major international football tournaments. Here’s my advice to have a successful 2026 World Cup.
Player markets: the shift that’s already happening
There’s been a big shift in how African bettors engage with football. Fans aren’t just betting on the result anymore, they want to bet on player-driven narratives within each game
Player prop markets are driving this shift. Who will be the next goalscorer? How many shots on target will a player have? Will a player get an assist?
It’s not surprising when you consider the scale of the personal followings involved. Sadio Mané has over 17 million Instagram followers. Cédric Bakambu of the DRC, one of the breakout names to watch this summer, already has 650K. These players have fanbases that dwarf those of their national teams, and fans want to back the players they follow.
The smartest operators will lean into this. Pre-match prop markets like Shots on Target Outside the Box, Player to Commit Fouls, and Player to Score a Header offer both depth and margin. This is why our betbuilder solution, MultiBet, continues to gain traction across Africa, offering bettors the ability to combine 18 different pre-match player props, plus thousands of possible market combinations into one bet.
But context matters enormously here. A betbuilder product in South Africa should look and feel nothing like one in Ghana. Pre-packaged, localised betbuilder markets are the answer.
When Ghana face England, your sportsbook should be surfacing selections like ‘Ghana to Win, Antoine Semenyo First Goalscorer, and Kojo Peprah Oppong to be Carded’. That level of localisation is what separates a generic product from one that actually resonates.
Once a bet is placed, the job isn’t done. Cash-out keeps fans engaged with their bets across the full 90 minutes, and offering betbuilder in-play, lets fans react to every moment within each match.
Growing margin when the local team plays
The first game of the tournament is Mexico vs South Africa, a repeat of the 2010 tournament opener, and it’s going to be one of the most bet-on sporting events in South African history, with so many different narratives around the game.
Will Lyle Foster repeat what Siphiwe Tshabalala did 16 years ago?
This is just one example, but it shows the narratives and huge national buzz that can drive heavily one-sided volume on the local side, which can lead to operators making a huge loss, if they don’t manage their odds properly.
When your customers are all betting the same way across hundreds of markets with related outcomes, your risk compounds fast.
Edge, our automated liability-driven odds solution, handles this by setting personalised pricing based on real-time betting activity across each fixture. It makes micro-adjustments continuously, across related main markets, player markets and micro-markets, so that regardless of the result, your margin is protected.
Get this wrong and a great result for Bafana Bafana becomes a catastrophic result for your P&L.
Drive 24/7 engagement at the tournament… and beyond
A North American World Cup means evening and late-night kick-offs across Africa, with a significant lull period during peak afternoon hours. That’s a problem if your entire engagement strategy is built around the tournament schedule.
That’s why you need high-quality football content to keep players engaged. Genius Sports recently added Swedish football’s top leagues to BetVision, the world’s first interactive betting experience that combines live streaming, in-play odds and an integrated betslip all within one experience.
Swedish football continues throughout the summer with games generally kicking off in the afternoon in Africa. Meanwhile, competitive gaming content is a great way to dive off-peak turnover, and is also available on BetVision, with 100s of eSoccer games streamed all day, every day. Pairing always-on football content with a fun and interactive experience, gives customers a reason to keep returning to your sportsbook each day of the tournament.
And then what happens after the World Cup?
In order to retain customers, you need trustworthy, high-quality data & odds across the competitions that African players love to bet on, leagues like the Premier League, French Ligue 1 and Italian Serie A.
These leagues kick-off just weeks after the World Cup finishes, and if your football product isn’t up to scratch, customers won’t stick around for long.
So yes, the 2026 World Cup is a huge opportunity for African sportsbooks. But to stand out you need a high-quality betting experience that keeps players engaged from the first whistle into the new season.
