Beyond the 90 Minutes: What the World Cup Really Demands from iGaming

On June 8, Oddsgate hosted a live webinar that refused to stay on the surface. Rather than celebrating the FIFA World Cup 2026 as a marketing bonanza, three industry insiders dissected what the tournament actually costs, demands, and teaches a sector operating at full throttle inside Brazil's first fully regulated betting market.

Moderated by Valter Delfrado Junior, Oddsgate's Director of Regulatory Affairs, the session brought together Leonardo Baptista, CEO of Pay4Fun; Bruno Veridiano Geraldini, Executive Affairs Director at Brazino777; and Wagner Fernandes, CMO of Oddsgate. What followed was more than an hour of candid, practical discussion covering infrastructure, payments, acquisition, retention, and the uncomfortable truth about what comes after the final whistle.

The First World Cup That Actually Has Rules

Every previous edition of the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Brazil happened inside a grey market. This time, there are no grey areas. The market is either legal or illegal, and that single fact changes everything about how operators must prepare.

The scale of that shift is hard to overstate. Brazil's betting boom happened largely from 2023 onwards, and the number of licensed operators, active bettors, and brands competing for attention has multiplied at a rate that makes any comparison with previous tournaments almost meaningless. "It will be the first great challenge for operators and providers at an event of this magnitude," said Wagner Fernandes, CMO of Oddsgate. "Either it is legal or it is illegal. There is no grey area anymore."

This regulatory shift is not just a compliance checkbox. It forces operators to dedicate real resources to process design, player protection, and regulatory reporting at exactly the moment they are also trying to scale for unprecedented traffic. As Bruno Geraldini observed during the session, the relentless pace of regulatory updates consumed energy that might otherwise have gone into creative CRM strategies and product innovation.

The Traffic Problem Nobody Talks About Enough

Most operators spend their preparation focused on pre-match peaks. According to the panellists, that is the wrong place to look.

Leonardo Baptista, CEO of Pay4Fun, shared a telling example from his own platform's experience: the biggest technological stress test the company had faced recently was not during a kick-off, but during a match that went to extra time. When a game ends level and heads into overtime, two massive transactional forces collide simultaneously. Players who had been betting throughout the match start withdrawing. Others, energised by the tension, start depositing for new bets. "The peak was not pre-match," Baptista noted. "It came when the game went to extra time. You have withdrawals and deposits happening at exactly the same moment. That is when you test whether your technology is really ready."

Pay4Fun began planning for the FIFA World Cup 2026 more than a year in advance, and deliberately chose not to expand into new markets or verticals during that period. The focus was singular: making sure the platform could handle between 7,500 and 10,000 transactions per second per operator account without degradation.

But raw capacity alone is not enough, as Geraldini was quick to point out. Scalability in hardware means nothing if the application layer cannot scale at the same rate. "Scalability is not only about hardware," he said. "Many times you add more servers and discover that the application was not ready to scale." Adding servers during a crisis only to find that the software was never built to use them is, in his words, a tremendous problem at the worst possible moment.

Two Pillars, One Stress Test

Wagner Fernandes returned several times during the webinar to a simple framework that he believes will define which operators come out of the tournament stronger. Two pillars, he argued, will be placed under maximum stress: technology and customer support. "Those are the two pillars that will be put under stress," he said. "Every game, at every moment, you have to keep the plates spinning."

The logic is straightforward. During a major international competition, bettors become more emotionally engaged. Emotional bettors contact support more frequently, raise disputes more readily, and are more sensitive to delays or friction. A platform can be technically flawless and still lose users if the human experience breaks down. Support is not a department that sits behind technology. During the World Cup, it is part of the product itself.

The CRM Opportunity That Got Away

Bruno Geraldini made what he described as a controversial observation: the pressure of regulatory adaptation may have cost the industry one of its most valuable creative windows. With operator attention consumed by compliance, licensing updates, and tax framework changes, the space for imaginative CRM work shrank. "I did not see a single campaign that made me think: that is what I wish I had built," he admitted. The ideas were there. The bandwidth was not.

Wagner Fernandes pointed to one cultural opportunity that remains largely untapped: the bolao. This uniquely Brazilian format, where groups of friends pool predictions across a tournament bracket, is already second nature to millions of people. It is structurally almost identical to a bet builder or an accumulator. "Everyone already knows how to do it," Fernandes said. "The opportunity was to bring that into the platform and say: you know that thing you do with your friends every four years? Come do it here." Most operators, he argued, did not get there.

Acquisition Is Only Half the Story

Fernandes drew a clear distinction between using influencers as vehicles for a brand's message and allowing them to become the message itself. A creator who has spent years building an audience around lifestyle or entertainment will not suddenly be trusted on sports betting simply because the World Cup has arrived. "Affiliates and influencers have to be part of a machine," he said, "not be the machine." The alignment between the creator's world and the product being promoted matters at every level of the funnel.

The broader point is about brand equity. Operators who outsource their positioning to third-party channels without a coherent underlying strategy find that when the channel goes quiet, nothing remains. The World Cup amplifies both strong brands and weak ones.

The Hardest Part Starts After the Final

If one theme ran through the entire webinar like a thread, it was this: the tournament is the warm-up. The real competition begins the morning after the final.

Baptista used a pointed analogy to frame the post-tournament challenge. Sportswear brands sell enormous volumes of shirts during major tournaments. The month after, sales collapse because everyone who wanted that shirt already bought it. The question for operators is exactly the same: how do you turn a moment of extraordinary volume into a sustainable base? He was direct about the risks of mishandling the transition. "It is not simply a matter of pulling the plug the day after," he said. "That is not the right path." Brazil's consumer protection regulation is demanding, and operational commitments do not evaporate with the closing ceremony. But maintaining peak infrastructure for months after demand has normalised is equally wasteful.

Fernandes reframed the post-tournament period as a strategic test rather than a retreat. Brazil's betting market has an estimated base of 28 to 29 million active bettors, against a total potential addressable market that some estimates place between 120 and 130 million people.

What Operators Should Be Doing Right Now

The webinar closed with a set of practical priorities that form a checklist for operators who want to emerge from the tournament with more than a traffic spike in their analytics dashboard.

• Test the full stack, not just the servers. Validate that application layers, payment integrations, and support workflows can scale in step with infrastructure. Hardware capacity means nothing if software cannot match it.

• Model for emotional peaks, not just volume peaks. Extra time, penalty shootouts, and simultaneous matches create bidirectional payment pressure that pre-match analysis does not capture. Stress-test for these scenarios specifically.

• Treat customer support as product, not overhead. Emotional bettors generate more support contacts. Staffing and training support ahead of the tournament is as important as any technology investment.

• Build CRM with genuine product backing. Campaigns that promise an experience the product cannot deliver accelerate churn rather than preventing it. Every communication should be grounded in a user journey that actually works.

• Define post-tournament decision gates in advance. Decide now which thresholds will trigger infrastructure reduction, team resizing, or CRM pivots. Reactive decisions made under pressure are rarely the right ones.

• Use the World Cup to explain the regulated market, not just to sell bets. Many new entrants will arrive with illegal operators as their only reference. The opportunity to demonstrate what a licensed, compliant platform actually provides is significant and largely unrealised.

The Bigger Picture

The consensus from the webinar was expressed most clearly in the closing remarks. The World Cup is not a life raft to cling to. It is, as Fernandes put it, a small rowing boat. If operators have the strength and the strategy to use it, it can carry them to shore. If they simply hold on and wait, the current decides where they end up.

For an industry in its first regulated cycle, with more operators than ever before competing for a bettor base that is itself newer and larger than at any previous tournament, the stakes extend well beyond 37 days of football. The operators who invest in the experience, the retention, and the long-term relationship will still be discussing this World Cup as a turning point in 2027. The ones who treated it purely as a volume event will be asking why the numbers did not hold.

Watch the full webinar recording to hear the complete conversation, including the audience Q&A and the final remarks from each panellist.