In May 2026, FunPay.com, an online gaming exchange https://funpay.com/en/, conducted a survey among its users to determine their preferences for the upcoming FIFA World Cup, as well as their attitudes toward the world’s most popular sport. The study included 10,000 participants from Eastern European countries (Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and others). The survey asked users to answer five simple questions, some open-ended, some closed-ended.
Mikhail Marchenko, founder of the FunPay platform: “We had a hypothesis that the gaming community doesn’t always follow the world of football. We wanted to confirm or refute this with a short analysis. We felt this would be especially relevant in the lead-up to the World Cup.”
This resulted in several interesting observations. Only 4% of respondents will follow the matches and tournament brackets, 21% are only interested in the tournament’s later stages (semi-finals and finals), 13% confirmed they are looking forward to the final and will watch it, 28% would be willing to watch football matches with friends, although they are uninterested in the results and tournament motivation, and 44% are completely uninterested in watching and don’t care about the results.
These results are partly explained by the fact that none of the countries surveyed reached the final stage. Meanwhile, 32% would follow the results of their national team if it qualified for the tournament, 26% would watch all their matches, and 42% would remain unchanged even if their national team participated.
When answering the question “Who do you think will win the championship?” Only 2/5 of respondents named teams that could realistically compete for victory: 12% favored Brazil, 11% Spain, 8% France, and 8% England. The rest preferred to support the underdogs, meaning teams that theoretically have no chance of success, with 61% supporting them. The most popular answers included Uzbekistan (7%), Qatar (7%), Iraq (7%), Curaçao (7%), Panama (5%), and Cape Verde (5%). Scotland, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Egypt, and Paraguay each received 3%, while Ecuador, Australia, Jordan, and New Zealand received 2%. As we can see, the respondents’ actual chances of winning don’t correlate with their answers, as they relied on distant associations or answered the question jokingly.
Afterwards, survey participants were offered a choice of 20 photographs of football players, each with their name and nationality unmarked. They were asked to select one and briefly justify their choice. To ensure the integrity of the experiment, the least publicized and well-known representatives of their national teams were chosen. The following players were featured:
1) JD Gunn (Panama)
2) Tahith Chong (Curaçao)
3) Roberto Lopes (Cape Verde)
4) Ibrahim Bayesh (Iraq)
5) Lachlan Bayliss (New Zealand)
6) Jackson Irvine (Australia)
7) Keito Nakamura (Japan)
8) El Mahdi Soliman (Egypt)
9) Mathias Olivera (Uruguay)
10) Richard Rios (Colombia)
11) Leo Ostigard (Norway)
12)Lawrence Shankland (Scotland)
13)Elliot Stroud (Sweden)
14)Arthur Masuaku (DR Congo)
15)Jeremy Arevalo (Ecuador)
16)Jakhongir Urozov (Uzbekistan)
17) Hyeon-woo Jo (South Korea)
18) Terry Yegbe (Ghana)
19) Martin Erlic (Croatia)
20) Nick Woltemade (Germany)
Norwegian footballer Leo Ostigard took the lead with 13% of the votes. Among the most common answers was the association a football player with the main character from the Hitman series. Lachlan Bayliss from New Zealand took second place with 12% of votes; he was considered similar to the protagonist of the game Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Jindrich. Next in the ranking were Martin Erlic from Croatia (8%) and Roberto Lopes (8%); they were associated with Commander Shepard from Mass Effect and Joel from The Last of Us, respectively. Tahith Chong from Curaçao (5%), Hyeon-woo Jo from South Korea (5%), Mathias Olivera from Uruguay (5%), Elliot Stroud from Sweden (5%), and Jackson Irvine from Australia (5%) received approximately the same number of votes. For survey participants, they resembled the characters Eddy Gordo (Tekken), Noctis (Final Fantasy XV), Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy (Resident Evil), and the hero from the Hobbit trilogy, Bard. Users also mentioned JD Gunn from Panama, Terry Yegbe from Ghana, and Richard Rios from Colombia, though participants were unable to pinpoint any similarities. Votes for the remaining football players were evenly distributed, with interesting associations including John Marston (Red Dead Redemption), Dorian Pavus (Dragon Age: Inquisition), Max Payne, and Tavish DeGroot (Team Fortress 2).
Finally, the final question asked participants whether their attitude toward the tournament had changed and whether they would follow the results of their chosen players’ national teams. Only 23% of respondents remained unmoved—they would not watch the tournament at all. The number of those who intended to follow the tournament fully increased from 4% to 10%. The percentages of those interested in the tournament in its later stages (21%) and those who were looking forward to the final (13%) remained unchanged. A new category emerged: those who would follow their chosen “hero,” accounting for 18%. Moreover, survey participants disregarded the answer to the third question and chose their “own” national team based on their answer to the fourth question. The number of those who would watch football with company (28%) decreased to 15%.
Mikhail Marchenko, founder of the FunPay platform: “We also had another hypothesis: could interactive user engagement help them discover a particular sport they might not have previously paid attention to? We’re seeing amazing results – if we create connections between users’ familiar worlds and the world of football through associations with specific characters, people, and teams, engagement increases. This is excellent proof that no industry today can be “secluded.” The world has become “media-driven,” and certain images flow into others, blending and creating something entirely new.
Therefore, we’re seeing increased interest in watching matches among audiences who previously wouldn’t have planned to do so, thanks to the fact that national teams and their individual members are now associated with familiar images. We’re seeing a surge in interest in national teams that previously held no interest for audiences uninvolved in football.
