How to run a sportsbook in 2026: From traffic spike to long-term retention

In the following special report, SOFTSWISS explores how sportsbooks can retain players following traffic spikes, like the $240bn wagered during the 2026 World Cup, through platform resilience and personalisation.

Opinion.- The 2026 FIFA World Cup ran 104 matches in just over a month. An estimated $240bn was wagered on the tournament worldwide, according to the Group of Copenhagen – roughly double the volume recorded during the 2022 World Cup. Data from SOFTSWISS confirms the scale of that shift: activity in sportsbook projects on the company’s software tripled during the tournament. That created two separate tests for operators. Could the platform hold up when demand spiked hardest? And once the final whistle blew, could they keep any of those new players around?

A strong offer can bring people to a sportsbook. It cannot make them stay. The operators who held on to World Cup players did not win with better bonuses – they won with a platform that stayed fast under pressure and a plan for the player’s next visit that started before the tournament ended.

Pick how you want to run your business first

This is one of the first questions to settle, whether the operator is launching a sportsbook from scratch or already runs a casino and is weighing whether to add one. The answer shapes everything that follows, and it is worth revisiting once that second scenario comes into focus later in this piece.

A turnkey solution hands over the technical core – betting engine, odds and risk management, compliance tooling, back office – so the operator can focus on the brand and the player base. A custom build hands over everything, including the cost and time that comes with it. The trade-offs across both models:

Which model fits depends on the business plan rather than the technology itself. A new brand testing a single market is usually better served by speed to launch. An operator planning to expand across several markets may need the deeper control over data, compliance, and player rules that a custom build allows.

The same logic applies to operators who are not launching a sportsbook at all, but adding one. A casino operator with a platform already live does not need to rebuild the business to offer sports betting alongside it. Connecting a sportsbook through an API or iFrame integration lets the two run side by side – the approach the SOFTSWISS Sportsbook offers casino operators who want to expand into betting without re-platforming.

Keep your live betting fast

With the ownership model settled, the next question is which specific tools actually keep a player engaged. This matters most right after a surge like the World Cup brings in a new audience – the platform now has to hold their attention with the tools it puts in front of them, starting with live betting.

Live odds have to keep up with the match itself – a goal or a red card that outpaces the price on screen costs the operator the next bet, most of it now happening on a phone mid-match. That is table stakes, not what wins the player’s loyalty. What does is what the operator does with that speed. A few things are:

• Offers built around what the player actually watches. A fan who bets on one league or team wants markets and prices for that league pushed to the front, not a general list of the day’s fixtures.
• Push notifications tied to the moment, not the schedule. A goal, a boosted price, or a market reopening after VAR is worth a notification. A generic “place your bets” reminder is not.
• In-play challenges that reward staying engaged. A short mission – place three in-play bets during this match, back a same-game parlay before half-time – gives the player a reason to keep watching and betting through the full 90 minutes, not just at kick-off.

None of this works if the underlying platform is slow. But once the speed is there, it is the personalisation, the timing, and the small in-match incentives that decide whether a player who arrived for a match is still around for the next league game.

Prepare for traffic peaks

Whether the sportsbook runs on a turnkey platform or a custom build, the same rule applies: the system needs to be tested against real peak conditions, not just average traffic. A World Cup final creates a different kind of load than a normal Tuesday, and the only way to know the platform can handle it is to test for it deliberately, before a major campaign, tournament, or marquee match puts it to the real test.

A major match does not create smooth, gradually rising traffic. It creates short, sharp peaks: a goal or a late penalty can trigger a burst of price changes, bet requests, and cashout attempts within seconds, and the same pressure hits login, Know Your Customer (KYC), payments, bonuses, and support all at once. Load tests should copy that real match behaviour, including:

• A sharp rise in logins just before kick-off
• A wave of bets immediately after a price change
• A full market stop and restart
• Many simultaneous cashout requests
• High first-time deposit traffic during a final

The plan also has to cover people, not just infrastructure. Tech, payments, marketing, and support teams need the same alert rules and the same contact list, and everyone needs to know in advance who can pull a release, disable a feature, or call the incident plan.

The stakes are real money, not just a bad dashboard. According to SOFTSWISS’ Deputy CTO at the time, a one-minute outage during peak hours can cost an operator tens of thousands of euros before anyone even notices the problem. Server load and database speed are useful signals, but they don’t show that business impact directly. Operators should also track successful bets, price-change rejections, cashout speed, payment success, failed player visits, and the effect on gross gaming revenue (GGR).

Teams should agree on reduced-service modes before the event, not during it – for example, delaying heavy reports or scaling back non-essential screen updates so betting, payments, settlement, and player safety stay protected first.

Once the platform can hold up during the busiest moments, the next task is keeping the players it just held onto.

Personalise based on player actions

Live betting keeps a player watching one match. What decides whether they come back for the next one is whether the offers and messages in front of them are built around that specific player, not broadcast to everyone.

A football fan should see the leagues, teams, and live games they actually follow before a list of general promotions. That requires a player profile built from several signals together – sport choice, betting rate, active days, player value, churn risk, marketing consent, and player-safety status. No single signal tells the operator much on its own; combined, they decide which offer actually fits this player, or this cohort, if personalising to the individual isn’t practical at scale.

A concrete example makes this clearer. A player who has shown a clear preference for one national team is a strong candidate for a bonus built around that team’s next match, rather than a generic World Cup promotion. Someone backing their own country’s team is more likely to use that specific offer and bet on that specific game than a player receiving the same generic message everyone else gets. The same logic applies to leagues, clubs, and even individual players a customer follows closely.

Timing works the same way. A player who deposited but placed no bet needs a different message from one who left after a bet settled, or one who browsed live markets and took no action. A first-bet reminder helps the first case; a match alert helps the second; a general deposit offer helps neither. Sending the right message at the right moment beats sending several generic ones.

This only works if the signals agree with each other. Product, CRM, risk, and player-safety tools need to read from the same player status – a self-excluded player should never receive a marketing message just because one system updated later than the others.

The numbers that show whether this is working: second deposits, 30-day retention, bets per player, return visits, and net GGR after bonus cost.

Cross-sell at the right time

Cross-selling only works if it fits the moment. A short casino game offered during half-time answers a different need from a slot promotion sent three days after the tournament ends – the product and the message both have to match what the player is actually doing right now, not what the operator wants to sell this week.

The gap between matches is the clearest opportunity. A player waiting for the next kick-off, or browsing between group-stage fixtures, is a natural moment for a casino bonus – low commitment, immediately playable, and timed to fill dead time rather than compete with live betting for attention.

Prediction markets open a second path, and a different one. A yes/no market on a political outcome or a major world event gives an operator a lighter-touch way to introduce sports bettors to a wider range of betting products, without asking them to learn odds or in-play mechanics first. The format is simple enough to lower the barrier for a casual bettor, which also makes it a comparatively low-cost way to acquire and engage traffic beyond the sportsbook’s usual audience. For a player who follows a specific country or global story rather than a specific team, a relevant prediction market can be a more natural entry point than another football-only offer.

Whichever product is offered, the bonus tool behind it needs to check player value, offer cost, fraud risk, and player-safety status before the offer goes out – cross-selling into a second product multiplies the number of places a bad decision can be made, not just the number of offers a player receives.

The metrics that matter here: second deposits, 30-day retention, use of the secondary product, bonus cost, and net GGR.

The next spike is not the last one

A World Cup-sized spike is not the hard part. Holding onto the players it brings in is.

That starts with the right ownership model, a platform tested against real peak conditions before the next tournament, and fast, personalised betting and cross-sell that follow the player between matches, not just during them.

None of this shows up in a registration count. The numbers that matter are repeat deposits, active days, 30-day retention, net GGR after bonus cost, and long-term player lifetime value.

The World Cup will not be the last spike a sportsbook has to handle. The operators who treat the next one as a repeatable process, not a one-off scramble, are the ones who keep more of the players it brings.