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  3. Beyond the Bet: Gambling, Engagement and Informed Choice at the 2026 World Cup

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Beyond the Bet: Gambling, Engagement and Informed Choice at the 2026 World Cup

The Gambling Commission's research on Gambling, Engagement and Informed Choice at the 2026 World Cup

Published
10 November 2026

Last updated
10 November 2026 - Changes

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  1. Contents
  2. Methodology
  3. Overview of Methodology

Overview of Methodology

A quantitative approach was used within this study, with a scoping phase that included reviewing results from our previous studies on major sporting events and the development of a tracker to monitor match results and statistics that could potentially influence betting behaviour during the 2026 World Cup.

Yonder Consulting conducted an ad hoc online survey with an initial sample of 1,000 adults who had bet on the World Cup. Participants were recruited from Yonder Consulting’s online omnibus panel. Fieldwork took place from Thursday 23 July 2026 to Thursday 30 July 2026, after the World Cup final on Sunday 19 July 2026.

Data quality checks identified 166 respondents with inconsistent and contradictory responses; these cases were removed for data integrity, ensuring that the data analysed was robust. The final sample featured 834 UK adults who had bet on the 2026 World Cup. This remains a robust sample size, sufficient to allow reliable analysis of those involved, and large enough to allow comparisons between bettor groups.

The final sample comprised of 70 new bettors, 296 occasional bettors and 468 existing bettors. Data was not weighted, and any instances with small sample sizes have been highlighted throughout the report.

Respondents were assigned a bettor type (new, occasional or existing) based on their response to question A5 from the survey which can be found in the appendix. Bettor types are representative of betting experience rather than frequency.

Comparisons of survey responses were carried out for different bettor types; new football bettors, occasional football bettors, and existing football bettors. Population proportion significance testing was used to determine whether differences between groups were genuine or likely to have occurred by chance. All percentages in this report are rounded to the nearest whole number, so some totals may not sum to 100%.

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