By Sean Donkin, Commercial Marketing & Account Manager, Podium
There is a category of sporting events that sits apart from everything else on the annual calendar. Not the Grand National. Not the Super Bowl. Not Wimbledon. Those are all major events with commercial significance, and an important anchor point in any operator’s annual plan. But operators know they are coming routinely plan for them.
The sporting events I am referring to are different: The FIFA World Cup, The Ryder Cup. The Rugby World Cup. The Olympics. Events which happen every few years.
These are the moments that reach far beyond the typical betting audience as they capture casual fans, lapsed bettors, and first-time depositors who wouldn’t normally engage with a betting product. They arrive less frequent and create a retention opportunity that the industry has never fully tapped into.
The spike is predictable. The drop-off still catches operators off guard.
Major tournament betting volumes are extraordinary. During the 2022 FIFA World Cup, more than 90 million* bets were placed in the group stage alone, a surge of engagement from audiences who are not part of an operator’s regular active base.
What happens next is predictable, and that is precisely the problem. Most casual bettors acquired experience the event, then leave, so operators lost a potential regular customer having done the initial hard work of acquiring them.
The key challenge is the absence of a natural follow-up, as the annual sports calendar creates its own migration bridge. When the event is finished, there is no comparable event waiting in the wings, making it a key challenge for operators, meaning they need to create a reason for them to return.
The framework: from tentpole to year-round
Operators who handle tentpole retention well share a common approach. They treat the event not as a campaign endpoint, but an opportunity for customer engagement & retention.
Before the event: segment by intent, not by deposit
Retention planning must begin pre-tournament. Setting up to capture key behavioural signals will support long-term value such as capturing cross-sport browsing, in-play market engagement, bet builder usage, session frequency on non-marquee fixtures, because if you can’t tag curiosity during the tournament, you cannot act on it when the tournament ends.
The bettor who watches the Olympic 100m final and then browses athletics markets the following morning is telling you something important. Segmentation by behavioural intent is where the difference between a spike and a retained user is made.
During the event: build habits, not just turnover
The temptation during any tentpole event is to maximise short-term volume. The smarter play is to use that engagement window to establish repeatable behaviours.
Promoting in-play derivative markets, predictive content, and same-game multis encourages deeper product interaction than match-result singles. A bettor who builds in-play habits during a World Cup is more likely to bring those habits to domestic sports when the tournament ends. Retention is habit-led, not promotion-led.
Immediately post-event: the seven-day window
The most critical retention period after any tentpole event is the first seven days and this is where the annual sports calendar earns its strategic value.
The World Cup ends in July. The racing calendar does not. Horse racing offers daily high-frequency events, strong in-play opportunities, and derivative markets that mirror the engagement patterns established during football tournaments. It is one of the most effective post-tournament bridges in any operator’s toolkit, and it is available every single day. Domestic football returns in August. Tennis Grand Slams continue through the summer. The annual sports calendar is dense enough to sustain engagement, but only if the operator has built the bridge before the final whistle.
The Ryder Cup, the Rugby World Cup, the Olympics, all create the same dynamic when they arrive. The operators building the infrastructure now are the ones who will not be caught out again.
Shift from promotion to content: weeks two to eight
Post-event churn accelerates when operators respond to declining engagement with heavier promotional activity. The cost rises. The margin falls. The users who stay for a bonus do not necessarily stay beyond it.
The operators who sustain engagement in the quieter weeks embed real-time data, premium statistics, predictive insights, and personalised in-play prompts into the user journey. Longer session times, stronger in-play participation, and reduced dependency on bonus activity follow. In regulated markets where promotional scrutiny is intensifying, this shift is not just commercially sensible, it is increasingly necessary.
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