The Blask Index for the Fantasy category rose 3.0% YoY across 100 countries, against +0.7% for iGaming demand overall. The release lands the same week Premier League 2026/27 kicks off on August 21 and the NFL season opens September 9 — the exact seasonal window that drives fantasy demand hardest.
Blask, an AI-native iGaming analytics platform, has published its Fantasy Sports 2026 report — the first comprehensive study of the fantasy sports category built on Blask Index data: 100 countries and 50 US states, July 2025 – June 2026.
According to the report, overall iGaming demand rose 0.7% YoY — the Blask Index across all categories climbed from 59.1M to 60.8M. Fantasy grew 3.0% over the same period, lifting its share of total demand to 6.4%.
Blask’s figures show growth isn’t concentrated in one or two outlier markets: of the 100 tracked countries, 49 saw both fantasy demand and its share of total demand rise at the same time. By comparison, only 25 countries saw both fall, and 22 saw demand rise while share fell.
“This is a structural shift, not a scattered spike,” says Blask.
Growth holds even where the market is supposed to dip
The report flags a counterintuitive detail: during major national-team tournaments — the 2022 World Cup, UEFA EURO 2024, the 2026 World Cup — fantasy demand actually fell relative to its seasonal baseline, because national tournaments pause club leagues, and season-long fantasy pauses with them.
Even accounting for those dips, the category’s full-year growth held at 3%: 4 times the overall market. The growth trend proved more resilient to calendar pauses than the market it’s built around.
Fantasy grew fastest this year in mid-size European markets: Lithuania (+100%), Romania (+94%) and Hungary (+90%) topped the list. The UK and US remain the category’s volume leaders, together accounting for 40% of global fantasy demand. Growth and scale are currently concentrated in different geographies — the top spots by volume and by growth rate don’t overlap.
The full Fantasy Sports 2026 report, including volume and share leaders by country, tournament and market seasonality, and the US anomalies, is available at: https://blask.com/reports/fantasy-sports-2026/
About Blask
Blask is an AI-powered platform for iGaming and gambling market analytics. The company turns fragmented open-source signals into real-time insight on brand visibility, player demand, and baseline revenue metrics, helping teams move first, spend smarter, and reduce risk across global markets.
Explore Blask in the NYCE Product Marketplace and read its analysis of European iGaming markets after the 2026 tax and advertising changes.
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NYCE commentary
Fantasy sports should be viewed as a seasonal engagement layer, not simply a separate betting category. Blask’s data suggests that demand can grow even when the wider market is comparatively flat, giving operators a potential route to maintain daily interaction around leagues, players and fixtures. The fastest growth in mid-sized European markets also creates a useful test case for locally targeted content and acquisition.
Demand, however, is not the same as revenue. Operators should combine search and visibility signals with registration quality, retention, conversion and unit economics before increasing investment. Used in that wider framework, the Blask Index can help identify when and where a fantasy proposition deserves deeper commercial testing.
Originally published in the NYCE Marketplace section on Yogonet on August 25, 2026.