At least 35,000 illegal scam sites have been identified that claimed to offer match video viewing or stadium ticket sales for the recently concluded 2026 World Cup, held across North and Central America.
According to the Nikkei on the 24th, security firm Trend Micro said 35,538 illegal World Cup sites created with generative artificial intelligence (AI) had been identified as of the end of June, with 1.48 million accesses recorded in Japan.
The illegal sites identified by Trend Micro were operated for phishing purposes, stealing information such as credit card details. The Nikkei explained that most of these sites, which include "worldcup" or "fifa" in their domain addresses (URLs), were made with great sophistication, using generative AI to replicate official World Cup sites almost perfectly and featuring automatic support for multiple languages. "Thanks to generative AI, individuals can now easily create such sites, so even when platform operators delete them, new sites are immediately generated in large quantities," it said.
Trend Micro explained, "During events that draw global attention like the World Cup, many users flow in through search results or social network services (SNS)," adding, "Illegal sites riding on global sporting events are expected to continue increasing going forward."
At the same time, as "match betting," in which people predict wins and losses and place wagers, increased during the World Cup, the prediction platform Kalshi recorded a trading volume of $27 billion (about 39.8 trillion won) during the tournament period, Reuters reported. This trading volume is more than double the $13 billion that Kalshi itself had projected. The number of users also reached 3 million, double Kalshi's estimate of 1.5 million.
