League football keeps the betting calendar ticking. International tournaments wreck the scale entirely. Industry guesses for the 2022 World Cup put global wagering somewhere north of $100 billion. Nobody agrees on the exact figure. The 2026 edition should top it. A big chunk of that comes from people who would not bet on a random league fixture if you paid them but lose all restraint when their national team plays. Sharper bettors who use the 1xbet official site and other bookmakers during these windows know the extra markets carry some of the softest lines you will find all year. Those markets vanish the moment the trophy is lifted.
Where the Money Comes From
Ask any bookmaker what happens to new signups during a World Cup and they will tell you the same thing. The 2022 group stage brought a wave of first-time accounts unlike anything a regular season produces. Deposits climbed sharply through November and December, and everyone expected it to dry up after the final. Except league football picked back up almost immediately, and enough of those new accounts stuck around to keep the numbers elevated into the new year.
Bet builders had a lot to do with that stickiness. The product barely registered at the 2021 Euros but by Euro 2024 it made up close to a fifth of all pre-match coupons. Copa América ran even higher. Bookmakers push them during tournaments because a bettor who constructs a same-game parlay tends to stay active longer than one who just backed a favourite at short odds.
Why Tournaments Pull in Non-Bettors
National pride does the heavy lifting here. Someone who cannot name a single player in the squad will still put £20 on the opening match because the flag is involved. Bookmakers respond by widening margins on the popular markets. Casual money does not shop for the best price, so the margin sticks and the volume makes up for any edge lost per bet.
The World Cup audience in 2022 was enormous by any measure. When that many people are watching, even a sliver of them opening a betting app for the first time creates handle that a full Premier League weekend cannot match.
| Tournament | Why It Matters for Bettors |
| 2022 World Cup | Biggest global handle on record; a wave of first-time accounts that partly stuck around |
| Euro 2024 | Bet builders went from a niche product to a default; pre-match betting dominated |
| Copa América 2024 | Highest bet-builder adoption of any tournament that year by a comfortable margin |
| Champions League Final | One match on one night that still outhandles most full league weekends |
How Tournament Betting Behaves Differently
Here is something you would not expect from regular league football. At Euro 2024, most bets were locked in before the matches started, and the final tilted even harder toward pre-match. League football usually runs the other way, with live betting carrying a bigger share. But tournament matches seem to make people commit early. Loyalty plays a role. So does not wanting to second-guess a pick against your own team mid-match.
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Player props tell you everything about who bets on tournaments and why. The public backed Mbappé and Ronaldo heavily for individual awards at Euro 2024, which is about as predictable as it gets. Kane drew a pile of money too. None of the three delivered. The bettors who went after Lamine Yamal or Cody Gakpo, names that did not carry the same hype, ended up on the right side. The outright final market told a similar story, with the sharper money sitting on the eventual winners while the casual crowd split more evenly.
The Fade After the Final
This is the part nobody has cracked. World Cup accounts churn faster than accounts opened during any regular league week. The gap between Euro 2024 and the Paris Olympics was short enough that some bookmakers pushed new users toward a different sport. A few of those transitions held. Most did not. They will show up again in four years, bet on three matches, then vanish. Knowing that pattern is worth something if you are sizing stakes during a tournament window.