Geographic spread tied to sponsorship strategy
Betsson Group has launched a football talk show called “Pride of a Nation,” featuring current and former players from four clubs in its sponsorship portfolio, as part of its marketing push around the 2026 World Cup.
The series brings together figures from Inter, Club Brugge, Atlético Nacional and Racing Club, with episodes running for more than 20 minutes across YouTube and social media. The lineup includes Christian Vieri, Denzel Dumfries and Stefan de Vrij from Inter, Simon Mignolet from Club Brugge, René Higuita from Atlético Nacional and Sergio Romero from Racing Club.
The four clubs give Betsson visibility across Italy, Belgium, Colombia and Argentina, markets that line up with the operator’s broader football sponsorship approach. The Club Brugge connection follows a three-year main partner agreement the operator signed with the Belgian club in 2025.
Betsson Group CCO Ronni Hartvig framed the launch in the context of the tournament’s commercial importance.
“The World Cup is the biggest football moment of the year for us,” said Betsson Group CCO Ronni Hartvig.
Part of a wider World Cup campaign
“Pride of a Nation” follows the operator’s launch earlier this week of the Betsson Football Festival, a global campaign developed mainly in-house and adapted into more than 100 localised versions using AI tools.
The activity comes during a period of heightened football advertising around the expanded 2026 World Cup, which runs across the United States, Canada and Mexico with 48 teams and 104 matches, up from 32 teams and 64 matches in previous tournaments. The larger format extends the competition by roughly a week and adds host cities across all three countries, giving operators a longer commercial window than at any previous World Cup.
ITV has described the tournament as its most commercially successful football event to date, with advertising revenue running around 30% above Euro 2024 levels. Betting operators have been among the categories driving that increase, with several major brands across Europe and Latin America building dedicated tournament campaigns rather than relying on standard match-day advertising slots.
Latin America central to the timing
The choice of Atlético Nacional and Racing Club as anchor clubs reflects where Betsson’s growth has been concentrated. Latin America has become one of the region’s fastest-expanding betting markets, with Brazil alone reporting $7bn in gross gaming revenue and 25 million bettors in its first year of regulation. Argentina and Colombia, where Betsson already holds sponsorship ties through Racing Club and Atlético Nacional, have followed a similar trajectory of rising online betting volumes ahead of major football events.
Marketing push follows mixed Q1
The content launch comes after a mixed first quarter for Betsson. Group revenue fell 3% year-on-year to €285.3m ($328m) in Q1 2026, while EBITDA declined 36% to €50m and net income fell to €25.5m.
B2C revenue grew 15% in the quarter, with Latin America up 25% and accounting for one-third of group revenue. That regional weighting helps explain why two of the four “Pride of a Nation” clubs sit outside Betsson’s traditional European base, at a moment when the operator needs its highest-growth region to deliver during the tournament window.
For more on Latin America’s betting market trajectory, see The iGaming EU’s overview of Brazil’s casino operators, and for comparative context on European operator performance heading into 2026, see BetMGM’s Q3 2025 results.
Whether Betsson’s Latin American momentum can offset the softer European numbers seen in Q1 will become clearer once full World Cup-period results are reported.
Source: Global Gaming Insider
