Betting creatives for the 2026 World Cup: what works at the biggest tournament in history – an analysis by SharkLink and Push.House

The 2026 World Cup kicks off in Mexico City on 11 June, and this is not just another World Cup, but the biggest tournament in the history of football. For the first time, 48 national teams will compete instead of 32, the schedule has expanded to 104 matches from the previous 64, and the tournament will be hosted by three countries — the USA, Canada, and Mexico — across 16 stadiums over 39 days. For advertisers, these figures are significant not in themselves, but because they change the mathematics of buying: the window of heightened demand has become longer and wider than at any previous World Cup. At SharkLink, we’ve collated data on offers and GEOs, and together with our partners at Push.House, we’ve analysed the traffic side and three real creatives that are running right now. In this article, we’ve compiled exactly what’s driving clicks and deposits at this tournament, rather than what worked a couple of seasons ago.

Why the 2026 World Cup changes the equation for Bayer

The main difference with this tournament is its scale, and this works both ways. 104 matches compared to 64 means almost twice as many fixtures offering a specific reason to place a bet, and consequently, the longest betting window ever seen at a World Cup. With 48 national teams from six confederations, far more countries than ever before have ‘their own’ team in the tournament — and each such team represents a live combination of ‘GEO + team + match’ for local creative content.

From a traffic perspective, Push.House sees the flip side of the coin: increased demand will persist for almost the entire month, but competition for impressions will also continue to rise throughout this period. During peak matches, both major teams and hundreds of smaller buyers enter the auction simultaneously, which is why the cost per click rises. It is not the one who placed a single bid for the entire tournament who wins, but the one who manages their bid as the tournament progresses — for specific matches and specific platforms.

On the offers side, we at SharkLink are seeing a mirror image: on match days, demand for the betting vertical surges sharply, and it is no longer the size of the bonus that matters, but the precision of the ‘offer ↔ GEO ↔ match’ alignment. The same bonus that was a draw in its own right a year ago barely moves the funnel today unless it’s tied to an event.

Why, during the World Cup, is it not the volume but the logic of the click that changes

During a tournament, it is not so much the size of the audience that changes, but rather what people respond to. A player doesn’t click on ‘football in general’, but on a specific match, odds, and news surrounding the team. This shifts the creative focus from the product to the event: the winner is whoever speaks to the user in the language of the upcoming match, rather than offering an abstract bonus ‘in general’.

The practical conclusion is simple. During the World Cup, creative content that isn’t tied to the tournament context competes with all the media hype surrounding the matches and loses out. Creative content embedded in this context, on the other hand, captures the attention already piqued by the event.

What still converts during matches, and what no longer does

In short, the specifics of the match come out on top, whilst the abstract bonus falls by the wayside.

Ads featuring well-known footballers, popular national teams and media personalities work best — a face that the audience recognises in half a second saves the advert the most valuable first fraction of attention. High odds and the potential winnings remain one of the main triggers for a click, especially when the user can immediately calculate the outcome of the bet: the ‘put in X — get Y’ format works better than a general call to action. Insider tips stand out on their own — match line-ups, injuries, substitutions of key players; such news often attracts more attention than a standard bonus, because it hits the mark of what people are looking for themselves.

Standard bonus messages not linked to a specific match and generic ‘100 Free Spins’ offers tied to sporting events have become noticeably less effective. Push.House highlights a key point: in the push notification format, it is precisely these types of creatives that lose their appeal first. The notification is prominent and arrives directly on the device, so the audience quickly dismisses irrelevant offers — hence the drop in CTR after just a couple of days of the campaign running. This can be remedied by rotating creatives and limiting the frequency of impressions, rather than increasing the bid.

An analysis of real-world ad creatives: three approaches that work right now

These principles are best illustrated through real-life examples. Below are three ad creatives currently in active rotation, each of which embodies a specific principle and targets a specific GEO.

Approach 1. A specific match and date

The first creative is based on a specific match: the crests of the two national teams, the date, and a call to bet on that particular game. There’s not a word about some abstract bonus here—the whole point is the event itself. It works because it hits the first element of the formula spot on: a specific match and time. The creative is in Indonesian, meaning it targets ID, one of Push.House’s top GEOs by volume, and the presentation is tailored to the local audience rather than a direct translation.

One practical point: since the creative content is based on the date and time of the match, these details must be accurate. An error in the schedule undermines trust in the creative content more than a poor image does — a user who is familiar with the tournament draw will spot the mistake instantly.

Approach 2. The star and the spirit of the team

The second creative piece relies not on logic but on emotion: a world-class star, a trophy and the image of the national team. The headline appeals to heritage and a grand dream, rather than to odds. This is a direct hit on the ‘media personality plus national team emotion’ principle: a recognisable face breaks down the barrier to attention, whilst national pride provides a reason to click. The use of Spanish indicates the creative is aimed at LATAM, where the emotional angle featuring stars and national team symbols traditionally works better than dry analytics.

Important: creatives featuring images of public figures may only be published with the advertiser’s consent and provided that the rights to use such images have been verified. 

Approach 3. Analytics and forecasting

The third creative takes the same star, but tailors it to a different audience: instead of emotion, it offers tactical analysis and a forecast of the outcome, with a topical angle on ‘AI prediction’. This appeals to a sense of calculation and curiosity, rather than national pride. Compare it with the second creative: the image is the same, but the packaging for emotion and for analytics is different — and this, in essence, is what localising the presentation for different types of audience is all about. The ‘AI prediction’ angle further grabs attention as a fresh trigger that isn’t yet found in every other creative.

GEO concludes: one creative approach won’t work everywhere

Localisation for a specific region is no longer just a nice-to-have; it’s essential for turning a profit: what generates clicks in one country may fail to elicit any response at all in another.

In Brazil, emotional adverts featuring football stars, yellow and green colour schemes, and imagery associated with the national team tend to resonate best. In Mexico, football rivalries, the atmosphere of a big match, and the national colours are more effective. In Europe — the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and other markets — the audience tends to respond more to odds, statistics, predictions and analysis, in other words, to cold, hard facts. The three creatives above are a clear illustration of this: the same tournament requires a different approach for ID, LATAM and Europe.

SharkLink offers for European GEOs for the 2026 World Cup

Alongside analytical European betting markets with odds, we offer tried-and-tested sports betting options:

• SlotLair Sport — UK / NL / BE / DE / ES / IT / FR / PT
• LegionBet Sport — UK / NL / BE / DE
• Runa Casino — IT / FR / ES

All three cover Tier 1 Europe, where the odds and the prediction are the deciding factors — the same mechanism as in the third example we looked at.

The formula for a powerful creative campaign for the 2026 World Cup

If we boil it down to the essentials, the creative approach at the tournament hinges on three elements:

1. The specific match and the time of the event.
2. The odds or potential winnings.
3. The current situation surrounding the team or players.

Remove just one of these elements, and the creative becomes just another ‘standard bonus’ that the audience has already learnt to scroll past. The first creative we’ve analysed relies on point 1, whilst the second and third rely on point 3, presented via a star; those that work best are the ones where at least two elements come together at once.

How to avoid blowing your budget: GEO-targeted offers and the principle of buying

Creativity accounts for half the result. The other half comes down to having the right offer tailored to the GEO and keeping a tight rein on your ad spend; otherwise, you’ll end up with a decent CTR but loads of leads that never go on to make a deposit.

When it comes to traffic, Push.House advises preparing in advance: launch a test a few days before the key match, keep a budget reserve to increase bids during peak times, and use event-specific tools—Microbidding for source-based bidding, CPA Goal for optimisation based on deposit value, Spend Limit on tests, and Audience Pixel to re-engage the already warmed-up audience between matches. Over a run of 104 matches, it is retargeting between games that delivers tangible savings: you can ‘squeeze’ the same user during the next match, rather than buying them all over again.

When it comes to offers, at SharkLink we don’t just look at the raw CTR; we examine the conversion funnel—specifically the click-to-registration and registration-to-deposit rates for each offer and GEO. A high click-through rate coupled with a low registration-to-deposit rate almost always indicates that the creative is promising something the landing page doesn’t deliver. And the basic rule: the offer is selected to suit the type of traffic, not the other way round.

Conclusions: what to pack

• The scale of the 2026 World Cup represents the longest demand window in the history of the tournament: plan for the full run of all 104 matches, not just a single game.
• The context of the match is more important than an abstract bonus – users click on the odds, the line-up and specific events.
• A single image can be presented in three ways — through the match, emotion or analytics — for different GEOs; not only the language but also the angle is localised.
• Test in advance and manage your bid in real time, rather than setting it once for the entire tournament.
• Avoid generic bonuses not linked to the match, copying others’ creatives word for word, and using a single creative for all GEOs at once.

The 2026 World Cup is a window of opportunity that’s only open for just over a month, and there won’t be another event of this scale for another four years. Put together a campaign while the tournament is underway: grab offers from SharkLink and buy traffic from Push.House.