India’s share of active users on the FIFA Official App jumped from 7% in 2025 to 19% in the first half of 2026, according to Sensor Tower’s “Beyond the Game: The Sports Report 2026.”
The near-tripling puts India among FIFA’s fastest-growing mobile markets anywhere, despite the country having no historical footballing pedigree to speak of.
FIFA World Cup 2026 effect, by the numbers
Sensor Tower’s report attributes the spike directly to the tournament. India’s growth was “reflecting exceptional engagement during the FIFA World Cup and reinforcing India’s position as one of FIFA’s fastest growing mobile audiences.”
The jump is notable because India’s sports app economy usually runs on cricket, not football. Asia recorded the largest seasonal swings in sports app downloads region-wide, with quarterly downloads “exceeding 125 million in Q2 each year from 2023 through 2025” — timed to the IPL, not global soccer events.
That means FIFA’s India gains came on top of the country’s cricket cycle, not instead of it.
6 billion web visits, 854 million hours in the FIFA World Cup 2026
India’s broader digital sports engagement also hit records in the same window. Per the report: “India was a notable exception, with both web visits (more than 6 billion) and time spent (854 million hours) reaching new highs in Q2 2026.”
The driver, again, was cricket. Sensor Tower credits “strong engagement around the Indian Premier League (IPL),” naming Cricbuzz and ESPN Cricinfo as the country’s leading sports websites.
Cricket still owns the global top spot
India’s cricket sites don’t just dominate domestically — they top the world. Sensor Tower found “Cricbuzz ranked as the world’s most-visited Sports Entertainment website” between July 2025 and June 2026, “followed by ESPN and ESPN Cricinfo,” with cricket’s popularity in India propelling both platforms into the global top three.
Cricbuzz, ESPN Cricinfo, and ICC Cricket also ranked among the fastest-growing sports websites globally over the past year — a reminder that even as football gets a World Cup bump, India’s sports internet is still built around the bat and ball.
The takeaway for football brands
For FIFA and its commercial partners, the 7%-to-19% jump suggests India can be activated in sharp bursts around marquee tournaments — a real opportunity, even without sustained football fandom between events.
But the cricket numbers are the bigger signal for anyone plotting a longer-term India strategy: engagement gains during global football events are layering on top of cricket’s grip on daily attention, not displacing it.
Brands banking on the World Cup bump translating into year-round football engagement in India may be reading the data too optimistically.
The report draws on Sensor Tower’s Mobile App Insights and Web Insights platforms, covering iOS and Google Play downloads and revenue, and desktop/mobile web traffic across 56 markets, with data through June 30, 2026.
