BETBY Playbook reveals how operators can turn World Cup players into retention decisions

What to do when the casual audience goes quiet and hard-won traffic starts to slip away

BETBY, the Tier 1 B2B sportsbook supplier, has published a new operator playbook titled “The World Cup Is Over. Now What? Win Engagement, Cut Churn, Grow LTV.”

The 2026 World Cup; 48 teams, 104 matches, 39 days, was the largest ever staged, and the acquisition effect across the BETBY partner network was immediate: an 86.4 per cent uplift in traffic and 84.8 per cent more active players against the month before kick-off. Every operator planned for that spike. Far fewer planned for the weeks after the final, when the casual audience goes quiet and hard-won traffic starts to slip away.

Drawing on the network-wide data, the playbook argues that by the final whistle operators already hold everything they need to act — and examines the three decisions that follow: what to show each player, when to intervene, and how much any given player justifies spending on.

“Most AI hype in this industry doesn’t survive contact with reality,” said Danil Emelyanov, Head of AI Labs at BETBY. “Built with a clear purpose, it delivers enormous value — higher personalization, more accurate prediction, more granular segmentation. That’s how data becomes commercial value.”

The playbook highlights what the World Cup did to traffic, active players and engagement speed; how much longer players stayed active with an AI-personalized feed; how at-risk players were scored while still reachable; and what spend each LTV tier deserved based on its projected value.