Betting and gaming operators relaxed sign-up checks during the 2026 World Cup, and fraudsters moved to the withdrawal stage, according to a benchmarking report from fraud prevention company SEON. The Paypers covered the findings on August 21, 2026. Across the panel, suspicious withdrawal signals rose 38% and the average blocked withdrawal doubled. At major sporting events, fraud has historically concentrated on account opening.
Operators loosened sign-up checks to win new bettors
Global registration volume rose 121% year over year during the tournament window, while the sign-up block rate fell 16%, based on the figures reported by The Paypers. The drop was steeper in Europe, where blocks fell 29%, and in North America, where they fell 18%. SEON’s explanation is competitive. In such a short acquisition window, a check that delays account opening means losing the bettor to a rival operator.
Fewer withdrawal attempts, for twice the money
All four regions saw suspicious withdrawal signals climb, by 38% globally once seasonality is stripped out. Two trends combined. The average blocked withdrawal doubled, from $202 to $436, while the frequency of attempts fell 44%. Fraudsters made fewer attempts, each for much larger sums.
- Fewer attempts, bigger amounts: attempt frequency fell 44% while the average blocked amount doubled.
- Already verified accounts: cash-outs ran through accounts that had cleared onboarding checks, often months earlier.
- A short window: attempts clustered around the tournament’s audience peaks, when monitoring teams were handling the heaviest volumes.
Dormant accounts and brute-force logins fed the cash-outs
The report pins down what drove those withdrawals. Reactivations of accounts inactive for more than 90 days that came with an identity mismatch rose 83% on a daily average basis across the network, and 118% in Latin America, according to the figures cited by The Paypers. Europe recorded 44% more dormant account reactivations, and brute-force login attempts there rose 115%.
A dormant account is valuable because of its history. An older, verified account that has already deposited and withdrawn keeps a high trust score in rules engines, even after months of inactivity. Taking it over bypasses every onboarding check without the need to fake an identity, because the operator itself has already verified that identity.
| Region | At sign-up | At withdrawal and on the account |
|---|---|---|
| Europe | Blocks down 29% | Brute-force login attempts up 115%, dormant account reactivations up 44% |
| North America | Blocks down 18% | Pressure shifted to trusted accounts and withdrawals |
| Latin America | Registrations up 278%, blocks up 19% | Synthetic identity blocks up 34%, welcome bonus abuse up 65% |
| Asia-Pacific | Not broken out in the published excerpts | Higher suspicious withdrawal signals, as in the other three regions |
Latin America tightened checks instead
One region went the other way. In Latin America, registrations jumped 278%, and operators tightened checks rather than relaxing them, with blocks up 19%. Synthetic identity blocks rose 34% and welcome bonus abuse 65%. A synthetic identity is a profile built from a mix of real and fictitious data. It matches no real person, so checks designed to catch impersonation miss it.
SEON’s broader 2026 industry report puts the findings in context. It says 57% of operators report fraud losses growing faster than their revenue, and that the sector favors hiring, cited by 47% of respondents, over investment in machine learning, cited by 34%. The shift seen during the tournament tests that choice. Catching fraud at withdrawal requires continuous behavioral analysis over the life of an account, which is hard to sustain by adding headcount alone.
How SEON built the benchmark
The data covers the tournament’s 46 days. SEON compares it with a 28-day baseline before kickoff and with a 36-day control window in 2025 to adjust for seasonality. The report breaks results into four regions: EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), Latin America, North America, and Asia-Pacific. The sample comes from a panel of tier 1 to tier 3 operators in regulated jurisdictions.