The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off next week with Canada, the U.S. and Mexico jointly hosting the mega event, and sports betting is predicted to surge this yr, a brand new report warns.
With greater than 100 games held over six weeks, total betting volumes are expected to exceed US$50 billion worldwide, a report by investment bank Macquire released on Wednesday says.
For every game, the typical wagers could exceed half a billion USD, the report added.
The expansion of the sports betting market within the last 4 years, particularly within the U.S., has meant that 65 per cent of the population has access to legal betting markets, versus 40 per cent through the 2022 World Cup, it said.
This edition of the World Cup comes with the skyrocketing popularity of soccer in Canada and the U.S. and has “the potential to introduce recent behaviors and incremental wagering, further supported by North America hosting, favorable time zones, and improved product depth,” the report said.
Canadian sports betting corporations see the World Cup as “a market-enhancing event,” said Bruce Kidd, professor emeritus of sport and public policy on the University of Toronto.
Ontario alone is prone to see an enormous surge in wagers this yr, he said.
“With Ontario being a highly competitive market with greater than 40 gambling corporations competing for market share, you possibly can ensure that they might be very aggressive in attempting to not only shore up their consumer base, but add to it,” Kidd said.
For a lot of Canadians, this may very well be the beginning of a dangerous slide into sports betting because the promoting becomes unimaginable to avoid, said Andrew Kim, associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s department of psychology.
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“For some people, this is perhaps the beginning where they could start experiencing some problems related to sports betting. And sports betting or gambling, very similar to alcohol, is an addiction,” he said.
There was a “frightening rise in addiction” with the “normalization” of sports betting, Kidd said. And the rise of prediction markets similar to Polymarket and Kalshi has only lent legitimacy to the practice, he said.
“It’s not going to a bookie or to a physical place like a track and placing a bet on one race or a series of races. It is a rapidly, lightning-fast opportunity to bet on any aspect of sport,” he added.
Kidd pointed to the recognition of “prop bets” or proposition bets. These are bets on individual events in the sport.
“In a baseball game, where there are 300 pitches thrown, you may bet on all 300 pitches and place 300 bets when you could. The betting apps are psychologically engineered to capture betters — to addict,” he said.
In soccer, this theoretically means people can bet on anything from the results of a single penalty shot to a free kick.
Prop bets have made sports betting apps feel more like slot machines at a casino, Kim said.
“If you happen to’re just going to bet on who’s going to win, the risks, I might say, are relatively light or less dangerous in comparison with when you’re going to bet on these micro prop bets while watching the sport and also you’re doing multiple of those bets and drinking — that’s going to be higher risk,” he said.
Sports betting has been related to increased risks of suicide, substance use disorders, crime and broader social harms, a study published within the Canadian Medical Association Journal in September 2025 found.
“The stats for addiction in Canada are simply frightening,” Kidd said.
“Since Parliament legalized betting in Canada in 2021, the share of Canadians overall [who] experience problem gambling or addiction has risen from 1.3 per cent to 9.9 per cent, which is a six-time increase in five years,” he added.
These risks of addiction worsen when you are drinking and betting at the identical time, Kim said.
“Drinking and betting on sports at the identical time is a fairly dangerous mix,” he said.
“Set a limit, set a financial budget by way of how much you possibly can realistically afford to spend and treat it as entertainment,” he added.
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