How many people can join a World Cup sweepstake?
The 2026 World Cup has 48 teams, which means 48 clean entries in a one-team-per-person sweepstake. But you can run a sweepstake with more people than teams — and with fewer. Here is how each scenario works.
The ideal number: 48
With 48 teams in the 2026 World Cup, a 48-person sweepstake is the cleanest format. Every participant gets exactly one team. No one has an advantage through holding multiple entries, and no teams go unassigned. The leaderboard reflects individual team performance with no ambiguity.
This is the maximum on playdrawr's free plan — 48 participants per sweepstake — which happens to match the World Cup field perfectly.
More people than teams
Most groups do not have exactly 48 people. If you have 60 participants and 48 teams, the standard approach is to assign all 48 teams first, then redistribute the remaining 12 participants by giving them a second team each.
The leaderboard then tracks each participant's best-performing team — or, more commonly, their combined points across all assignments. This is the more engaging format: someone holding two decent teams has a genuine chance of leading, but someone who drew one favourite is never more than one good run away from the top.
For groups larger than 48, playdrawr's Balanced Draw option ensures second and third teams are distributed as evenly as possible — no one person ends up with three strong teams while others hold only long shots.
Fewer people than teams
A sweepstake with fewer than 48 participants means some teams go unassigned. This is common — an office of 20 people will each receive two or three teams on average.
With only 20 participants and 48 teams, each person gets approximately 2–3 teams. The draw is still random, the scoring still automatic, and the leaderboard still works — participants are simply more likely to have at least one competitive team.
Some groups choose to exclude the weakest-ranked teams from the draw pool when running a small sweepstake, to keep the competition tighter. This is a matter of organiser preference — there is no right or wrong approach.
Running multiple sweepstakes for very large groups
If your group is over 96 people, running two separate sweepstakes often works better than one very large one. Two sweepstakes of 40–50 people each create two focused competitive groups rather than one unwieldy leaderboard where people struggle to follow their position.
Both sweepstakes can reference the same World Cup matches — the scoring comes from the tournament regardless. You can even run a final crossover round: the winner of each sweepstake competes for a combined prize.
Both sweepstakes are free on playdrawr.
Minimum number of participants
A sweepstake technically works with two people, though the competitive element diminishes significantly below five or six. The sweet spot for engagement is somewhere between 10 and 30 — enough people that the leaderboard is genuinely competitive, few enough that everyone knows everyone and has a personal stake in the result.
For very small groups (under 10), consider whether a sweepstake or a prediction competition is a better format. A sweepstake assigns teams randomly; a prediction competition asks participants to forecast results, which suits smaller, more invested groups.