The trophy has been lifted. Now comes the most interesting part for operators: counting the revenue, assessing what worked, learning from what didn’t, and deciding what to change before the next betting event.

On Thursday, August 20, at 4:00 p.m. CEST, GR8_TECH will host “The Locker Room: World Cup Numbers”, a closed-door benchmarking session created to help operators make sense of their tournament results and see how their performance stacked up against the room and the wider market.

Led by Dinos Doxiadis, Head of Sportsbook Business at GR8_TECH, the session will combine anonymized benchmarks with in-depth post-World Cup platform data on margin, player behavior, retention, and peak-load performance. It isn’t a tournament recap, but a working session built around deeper analysis than GR8_TECH releases publicly.

A First Look at the World Cup Numbers

Initial aggregated data from the GR8_TECH platform shows an average tournament margin of over 12%, alongside a significant increase in staking during the knockout stages.

Average stakes during the play-offs were 53% higher than during the group stage, while the average stake on the final was 89% above the tournament average.

Player interest was highly concentrated. Matches featuring Spain, Argentina, England, or France generated 42% of the total World Cup turnover. Argentina was the tournament’s most-bet-on team, accounting for 12.5% of all bets, although Spain finished only 0.09 percentage points behind Argentina by turnover.

The final also created one of the tournament’s most demanding operational moments. Within one minute of the final whistle, GR8_TECH’s platform settled more than half a million bets, demonstrating the level of processing performance required when a global audience reaches the same outcome simultaneously.

Inside The Locker Room, participants will examine what happened across:

• Live betting and bet builders
• Margin and staking dynamics
• Peak-load and settlement moments
• Acquisition compared with player reactivation
• Retention beyond the final whistle
• Unexpected geographic performance
• Operational, product, and campaign failures
• Priorities for the next major event

“The World Cup generates a huge amount of data, but the value comes from understanding what sits behind it,” said Dinos Doxiadis, Head of Sportsbook Business at GR8_TECH. “This session is about identifying the patterns operators might miss in their own reporting, challenging assumptions, and turning one month of World Cup activity into better decisions for future events.”

See How Your World Cup Stacked Up

Leave the session with anonymized benchmarks, exclusive GR8_TECH platform insights, and a clear view of where your World Cup performance led—or lagged—the market.

Turn the lessons into your next strategy. Join The Locker Room: World Cup Numbers on Thursday, August 20, at 4:00 p.m. CEST.

Register here to secure your place.

GR8_TECH. Platform for Champions

GR8_TECH is an award-winning provider, delivering high-performance sportsbook and iGaming solutions that empower operators to lead and win in competitive markets. GR8_TECH’s comprehensive portfolio includes the GREAT_TURNKEY and GREAT_CRYPTO TURNKEY solutions, GREAT_SPORTSBOOK, and GREAT_CASINO AGGREGATION.

With a geo-specific approach to solutions, a focus on practical innovations, and an operator-first mindset, GR8_TECH helps its clients achieve measurable results in their target markets quickly and efficiently. Trusted by top operators worldwide, GR8_TECH has over 100 successful cases and earned multiple recognitions, including the title of Platform Provider of the Year by SBC Awards 2025.

Following Meta’s algorithm updates, many media buying teams found it much more difficult to scale Facebook traffic. Customer acquisition costs increased, advertising accounts became less stable, and even successful campaign combinations lost their effectiveness faster.

In the new Success Story, N1 Partners explains how they helped a media buying team specializing in Facebook traffic for the iGaming vertical adapt to changing market conditions and successfully scale traffic acquisition across Tier-1 GEOs.

The results after nine months of collaboration were impressive: a 155% increase in FTDs, 135% ROI, and a 22% reduction in average CPA.

About partner

The featured partner is a media buying team with four years of experience in affiliate marketing, specializing in Facebook traffic acquisition for iGaming products.

At the beginning of the partnership, the team was already working with Tier-1 GEOs, including Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and Australia. They consistently identified profitable campaign combinations but encountered the typical scaling limitations faced by many teams in the industry.

To continue growing, they needed a partner offering high-quality products with strong Reg2Dep and LTV performance, reliable payouts, and responsive support capable of handling increasing traffic volumes.

Why did they choose N1 Partners?

Several factors influenced their decision:

• High Reg2Dep rates;
• Strong player LTV performance;
• Reliable and consistent payouts;
• Fast and responsive affiliate manager support;
• The ability to work with multiple brands within a single ecosystem.

For the initial testing phase, the team selected N1 Bet, RollXO, Lucky Hunter, and Retro Bet.

Preparing for launch

Before launching the campaigns, N1 Partners specialists analyzed the partner’s previous performance and proposed a structured testing plan.

Instead of focusing on a single offer, they decided to test multiple brands simultaneously. This approach allowed them to identify much faster which products performed best with Facebook traffic in each GEO.

At the start, the partner also received several recommendations:

• Start with the CPA payment model;
• Separate advertising campaigns by audience type;
• Build dedicated landing pages for each GEO instead of using one universal funnel;
• Test broad audiences without narrow interest-based targeting;
• Use multiple creative formats;
• Evaluate not only registration costs but also the quality of acquired players.

This strategy helped identify promising campaign combinations early while preventing unnecessary spending on underperforming campaigns.

Choosing GEOs, offers and creatives

N1 Partners affiliate manager shared internal performance data highlighting products that consistently delivered strong results with Facebook traffic.

For the first stage, three high-potential GEOs with stable demand were selected:

• Canada;
• Germany;
• New Zealand.

Australia was intentionally excluded from the initial testing phase to concentrate the available budget on fewer markets and collect meaningful data more quickly.

Offers were selected primarily based on two key metrics: deposit conversion rate and player quality. Among all available brands, the selected products consistently demonstrated the strongest overall performance.

For every GEO, the team created special creatives featuring localized visual elements and market-specific bonus offers.

Workflow organization

After launch, specialists from N1 Partners worked alongside the partner on a daily basis, analyzing campaign performance and deciding on the next optimization steps.

Teams closely monitored:

• Reg2Dep and LTV;
• Player quality;
• Budget allocation between products;
• Individual GEO performance;
• Results of newly launched creatives.

Most operational questions were resolved by the affiliate manager within a few hours. This allowed the partner to quickly switch offers and launch additional tests without interrupting traffic acquisition.

Initial hypotheses

During the preparation phase, N1 Partners suggested testing several working hypotheses:

• Video creatives could outperform static banners;
• Different advertising concepts might attract audiences of different quality;
• Rapid budget increases could reduce campaign stability;
• Evaluating traffic solely based on acquisition cost does not reflect its actual value.

The team tested lifestyle creatives, game-focused concepts, bonus offers, and social proof elements. Budgets were increased gradually, while campaign performance was evaluated not only by CPA but also by player behavior after making their first deposit.

Strategy and optimization

After the initial testing phase, the team focused on increasing traffic volumes without compromising player quality.

To achieve this, the partner:

• Duplicated the highest-performing campaigns;
• Regularly launched new creatives;
• Split campaigns by device type;
• Applied successful approaches to markets with similar audience characteristics.

At the same time, budgets were increased gradually, helping maintain campaign stability while keeping CPA within the target range.

What delivered the best results?

Four optimization strategies produced the strongest performance improvements:

• Creative localization;
• Continuous production of fresh advertising materials;
• Pausing underperforming campaign combinations within the first 48 hours;
• Optimizing based on player quality rather than CPA alone.

At one stage of the campaign, the affiliate manager noticed that one of the brands was achieving a significantly higher Reg2Dep rate from Facebook traffic in Canada.

After jointly reviewing the data, part of the advertising budget was shifted toward that product.

Results

After nine months of collaboration, every key performance indicator improved significantly.

• Monthly FTDs increased from 450 to 1,150 (+155%);
• ROI increased from 86% to 135%;
• Average CPA decreased by 22%;
• Revenue increased by approximately 2.5 times;
• Player LTV increased by 25%.

The most important achievement was not a single successful campaign but the creation of a sustainable Facebook traffic acquisition model. The partner was able to continuously scale traffic across Tier-1 GEOs without experiencing a proportional increase in acquisition costs.

Key takeaways

1. What was the biggest advantage of working with N1 Partners?

According to the media buying team, working with N1 Partners helped establish a clear and scalable traffic acquisition process.

The main contributing factors were high-quality products, strong Reg2Dep performance, and constant communication with the affiliate manager. The team also emphasized that N1 Partners specialists proactively suggested new testing hypotheses before market changes began noticeably affecting campaign performance. This allowed them to stay ahead of industry trends instead of reacting only after performance had already declined.

2. What made the results possible?

Polina Bogatko, Affiliate Manager N1 Partners: “The biggest factor behind our success was the partner’s willingness to continuously test new approaches. We evaluated not only Facebook campaign metrics but also player quality for every brand and GEO. This enabled us to redistribute budgets quickly and focus on the most promising campaign combinations.

After launching localized creatives and testing new audiences, the number of FTDs in Canada nearly doubled within just a few weeks, while campaign ROI remained stable. This clearly demonstrated the importance of continuous testing, fast analytics, and close collaboration between both teams”.

Scale your Facebook traffic with N1 Partners!

N1 Partners gives affiliates access to:

• 14+ casino and betting brands with high Reg2Dep 
• 10+ Tier-1 GEOs
• CPA up to €700 and RevShare up to 55% + NNCO for top partners

Be number one with N1!

Together with the FIFA World Cup, N1 Sport Promo, a six-week campaign for partners working with sports and Prediction Markets traffic, has come to an end. Throughout the promotion, participants received increased payouts based on the volume of acquired FTDs.

N1 Partners experts reviewed the campaign results, analyzed the performance, and highlighted the key takeaways: which traffic sources delivered the best results, how audience behavior evolved, and which strategies can help affiliates achieve stronger performance with sports campaigns.

N1 Sport Promo In Numbers

• Duration: June 10 – July 20

• Top 3 GEOs: CA, DE, AU

• Top traffic sources: SEO, ASO, Facebook

• Best-converting brand: N1 Bet

• Brands participating in the promotion: N1 Bet, Lucky Hunter, RollXO

3 Key Campaign Takeaways

1. Which traffic sources and approaches performed best?
   “The most effective traffic sources were those that allowed affiliates to quickly adapt to the sports agenda. 

SEO performed well with users already interested in specific matches, Facebook made it possible to rapidly scale campaigns around trending sporting events, while ASO helped attract more users during periods of high demand for apps.

Match- and tournament-specific creatives delivered the strongest results,” said Daria Smirnova, Affiliate Team Lead, N1 Partners.

2. What were the most common mistakes affiliates made?
   “The biggest issues were weak alignment with current sporting events and generic creatives use instead of materials tailored to specific matches. The faster affiliates update their content during major tournaments, the more effectively they can capitalize on peak demand,” commented Daria Smirnova, Affiliate Team Lead, N1 Partners.
3. What should affiliates keep in mind when preparing for major sporting events?
   “It is essential to prepare for major tournaments in advance. Keep track of key matches, plan your creatives ahead of time, and update your content promptly. An event-driven approach helps scale betting traffic more effectively,” said Daria Smirnova, Affiliate Team Lead, N1 Partners.

Product Analytics

In addition to summarizing the results of N1 Sport Promo, the N1 Partners product team analyzed player behavior during the FIFA World Cup 2026 to identify the key factors influencing player engagement.

As the tournament progressed toward the knockout stage, user activity steadily increased. The decisive matches attracted greater attention, drove higher betting volumes, and increased the share of live betting. Players were more likely to follow matches in real time and placed bets more actively as the games unfolded.

• Spain vs Argentina final delivered peak player activity. Fans were almost equally divided between the two teams, which helped maintain high engagement throughout the entire match.
• France vs Spain and England vs Argentina semi-finals were among the most discussed matches of the tournament. They ranked among the leaders in terms of audience response and the number of live bets placed.
• The average bet size during the semi-final matches was approximately 30% higher than during the group stage. This demonstrates that the tournament’s key matches encouraged significantly more active player participation.
• Match scheduling also had a noticeable impact on performance. Games held at convenient times for players attracted more users than some of the late-night matches during the group stage.

Monetization and Retention After the Tournament

The end of a major tournament is not the end of the opportunity.

To preserve the value of the acquired audience after the tournament, N1 Partners recommends:

• Continue engaging users after the tournament ends.
  Maintain communication with players who may switch to other sporting events and continue their betting activity.

• Prepare the next entry points in advance.
  Build acquisition funnels for upcoming tournaments and championships to retain the traffic you have already received.

• Use cross-promotion and refresh your offers.
  Expand user engagement opportunities by combining sports and Prediction Markets traffic.

• Focus on long-term player value.
  Work with players with a long-term perspective — not only generate FTDs during periods of peak demand but also maintain user activity after the tournament.

N1 Partners team would like to thank all partners for participating in the N1 Sport Promo. More campaigns and even more growth opportunities with N1 Partners are ahead — stay tuned for upcoming updates!

Reasons to work with N1 Partners:

• 14+ casino and betting brands with high Reg2Dep 
• 10+ Tier-1 GEOs
• CPA up to €700 and RevShare up to 55% + NNCO for top partners

Be number one with N1!