Gaming Compliance International said its first full global measurement of illegal streaming during the FIFA World Cup 2026 found 174.3 billion qualifying illegal stream views worldwide, defined as illegal streaming sessions lasting at least 90 seconds, with an average of 1.68 billion per match and 6.2 billion for the Spain-Argentina final. The company said 95% of those views carried advertising for unregulated gambling and argued that illegal streaming has become a large-scale customer-acquisition channel for offshore, unregulated and unlicensed betting operators through affiliate agreements that can pay streamers 25% to 50% of net revenue from referred customers. GCI said the metric counts stream views rather than unique viewers and adjusts for interruptions, forced refreshes, reloads, mirror switching and channel resets. It also tied the tournament to a broader $593 billion global online betting market, of which it estimated $409 billion, or 69%, was unregulated, and warned that fake video players, pop-ups and HD or 4K prompts on illegal streams can conceal malware, spyware and keyloggers.