The World Cup will likely be the biggest gambling event in history

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is expected to be the biggest betting event in history — and the first to test the U.S. sports-wagering market at full scale.

The tournament kicks off Thursday in Mexico City and will end about six weeks later at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. Between those two bookends, 48 teams will compete in 104 matches.

Analysts predict the betting opportunities could reshape customer acquisition for sportsbooks, prediction markets and the sports-data companies that power them.

Global wagers on the 2026 World Cup could top $50 billion, up from more than $35 billion during the 2022 tournament according to Macquarie analyst Chad Beynon.

The expanded format, 40 more matches than in 2022, plus favorable North American time zones and broader legal sports betting access in the U.S. could create a meaningful tailwind for online gaming companies.

Well-poised for the World Cup

Macquarie expects the World Cup to produce a roughly 2% to 5% boost to 2027 operator EBITDA, with the biggest benefits going to companies with large soccer audiences, international exposure and the ability to cross-sell bettors into higher-margin products.

The firm pointed to FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment as one of the best positioned operators. The company's global footprint positions it to gain traction not only in North America where the games are played, but in countries like Brazil where "football" is a religion.

"We think the Super Bowl is big here in America. You might have 200 million people watching it," Flutter CEO Peter Jackson said last week on "Closing Bell." "Last time, when the World Cup Finals played in Qatar, 1.5 billion people watched the final. Five billion people watched the whole competition, so this is massive."

Macquarie also listed Super Group and Rush Street Interactive as being well-positioned to take advantage of the rise in betting activity, along with sports-data companies Genius Sports and Sportradar, which just inked a deal with prediction platform Kalshi for data on professional soccer, baseball, hockey and UFC.

Deutsche Bank estimates the soccer tournament will produce betting handle — that is, the total wagered on a given event — in the U.S. alone of about $3.3 billion, though it laid out both a bull and bear case around the figure.

The firm estimates FanDuel could take about $1.3 billion in U.S. World Cup handle, followed by DraftKings at about $1.1 billion. Deutsche Bank sees BetMGM, co-owned by MGM and Entain, bringing in about $250 million, Caesars at about $120 million and Penn's theScore Bet at about $83 million.

A maturing sports-betting market

Caesars Sportsbook is offering 10 times more betting options than it did for World Cup 2022 and folding in options that proved to be fan favorites during March Madness.

"If the U.S. Men's National Team makes a deep run, that's when things could really accelerate, driving massive spikes in engagement and betting with each match," Caesars Digital senior vice president of sports Dominic Hammond told CNBC. "At the same time, the tournament's unpredictability and the surge in parlay betting mean just a few key upsets can significantly swing outcomes.

The U.S. sports-betting market has matured rapidly since the last men's World Cup in 2022. About 65% of the U.S. population now has legal access to sports betting, compared with about 40% during the 2022 tournament, according to the American Gaming Association. Sportsbooks have also improved same-game parlays, live betting and soccer-specific products, which could make the tournament more commercially valuable than past World Cups.

This time, U.S. bettors across the country can wager on the matches through prediction platforms. However, multiple states are embroiled in legal proceedings over prediction markets, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission asserting it has exclusive jurisdiction to regulate event contracts

Licensed betting apps are still the most popular platform for World Cup bets, according to a survey from fraud prevention firm SEON, with 29% of respondents saying that's their choice. But 19% said they opt for prediction markets, ahead of ahead of social casinos, crypto-based platforms and offshore sites.

Prediction platforms are growing exponentially

Piper Sandler analyst Patrick Moley wrote in a Tuesday note, that Kalshi and Polymarket together saw volumes growing 13% week over week to a record $7 billion in trading volume.

Kalshi, which dominates the space, is offering nearly 500 unique markets related to the tournament. The most trading volume currently is on the July 19 final, with Spain and France leading the probabilities of winning.

Fanatics, FanDuel and DraftKings also have jumped into predictions platforms, but limit the sports markets to states where they don't have gaming licenses.

DraftKings stock popped 11% Tuesday after it released May trading volume results that showed a 34% jump over the previous month to $3.1 billion dollars on an annualized basis.

"Annualized consumer volume" — the number DraftKings compares to sportsbook handle — came in at $1.3 billion, a 24% month-over-month increase. For comparison, the company's sports betting handle last year was about $54 billion.

Sportsbooks have the scale, state licenses, promotions and existing customer bases. Prediction markets may appeal to users who want to trade outcomes in a format that feels closer to financial markets than traditional betting. Sports-data companies are trying to sell picks and shovels to both.

The SEON survey found nearly a quarter of respondents admitted to what the survey called "friendly fraud," including signing up for multiple betting accounts to access promotions. Millennials showed the highest propensity to bet: 65% said they were at least somewhat likely to wager on matches, while also over-indexing in prediction-market use, social-casino use, crypto-platform use and multiple-account signups.

That worries advocates of responsible gambling. Matt Zarb-Cousin is a self-proclaimed former gambling addict who went on to co-found Gamban, a global technology that blocks access to online gambling sites and apps. He said gambling dependence becomes more likely when there are multiple matches every day for more than a month.

"Betting apps are optimized for engagement; they want to keep their users in action for as long as possible so their gambling becomes habitual," Zarb-Cousin told CNBC. "Fans will be bombarded with continuous advertising and inducements for frequent betting opportunities. For the gambling industry, the World Cup will be like March Madness on steroids."

CNBC's Ananya Chetia contributed to this report.

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship which includes a minority investment and customer acquisition.