Gaming Compliance International said the FIFA World Cup 2026 generated 174.3 billion qualified illegal stream views worldwide, defined as illegal stream 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 offers and argued that illegal streaming has become a customer-acquisition channel for unregulated operators through affiliate agreements (revenue-sharing referral deals) that can pay streamers 25% to 50% of net gaming revenue. GCI said its estimate is based on global monitoring, market analysis and a mix of proprietary and third-party licensed data sources, and that the metric counts stream views rather than individual viewers while adjusting for interruptions, forced refreshes, reloads, mirror switches and channel resets. Before the tournament, GCI President Ismail Vali told Forbes that Spain would win the trophy and that crime and unregulated gambling would be the biggest beneficiaries; Spain won, and GCI said its post-tournament data showed the scale of that second warning. The report also tied the World Cup to a broader $593 billion online betting market, including $409 billion in the unregulated segment and $184 billion in the regulated segment, and warned that fake video players, pop-ups and HD/4K prompts on illegal streams can conceal malware, spyware and keyloggers.