According to Blask Index data, Japan and South Korea recorded two of the strongest iGaming demand increases among tracked World Cup markets, comfortably surpassing all three host nations despite neither side advancing deep into the tournament.
The USA, Canada, and Mexico-hosted 2026 World Cup has come to a close, setting new benchmarks with 48 participating nations and 104 games. The report explores its impact through three perspectives:
- Search interest;
- iGaming demand;
- How the tournament settled for the bookmakers.
Blask compared iGaming demand (the Blask Index, its real-time read on betting-brand search demand) across two windows: the pre-World Cup baseline (May 3 – June 10) against the tournament window itself (June 11 – July 19), country by country.
Panama posted the single largest jump, +84.8%. Japan came second, +77.6%. South Korea’s +56.4% ranked fourth, behind Paraguay’s +60.2% and just ahead of Germany’s +53.5%.
Top performers in Asia
| Country | Pre-WC demand | WC-period demand | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | 739,346 | 1,313,338 | +77.6% |
| South Korea | 880,579 | 1,377,100 | +56.4% |
None of the three co-host nations came close. Canada’s demand rose 18.5%, Mexico’s rose 16.7%, and the USA’s fell 3.3% against its own pre-tournament baseline. Hosting the tournament moved less demand than being a football-mad market with money already flowing through it.
Japan and Korea’s WC-period demand, around 1.3–1.4M each, is roughly a seventh of any host’s (9.4M–10.2M). Hosting moves a bigger market by a smaller margin. Japan and Korea moved from a smaller market to a much bigger one.
The Match Profitability Index angle
Blask’s newly-launched Match Profitability Index scores every match on who won the betting market rather than who won the game. Japan’s 4-0 win over Tunisia in the group stage ranked among the tournament’s ten most costly results for bookmakers (-6.8): bettors backing that match came out well ahead of the market’s pricing.
South Africa’s 1-0 win over South Korea went the other way, ranking among the ten most profitable matches for bookmakers (+5.1).
