Just two weeks until the World Cup 2026 kicks off ⚽

The World Cup is nearly here.

And honestly, seeing how many people are already getting involved through playdrawr has been pretty surreal. What started as a quick tool for our own office sweepstake has somehow grown into something used by just under 5,000 players ahead of the tournament. I genuinely didn't expect it to grow this quickly.

Right now feels like the calm before the storm. The fixtures are locked in, group chats are waking up, and someone in every office has already asked when the sweepstake draw is happening. Someone else is insisting they "never get a good team", while another person is pretending they don't care before inevitably becoming fully invested by the second round of matches.

In about fourteen days, the chaos properly begins.

That's when the live leaderboard kicks in. Every goal changes the standings. People suddenly become lifelong supporters of countries they'd never normally watch because they happened to draw them on a random Tuesday afternoon.

That's why I think sweepstakes still work so well. No fantasy football spreadsheets. No tactical analysis. No football knowledge needed. Just random teams, one link, live standings, and pure tournament chaos. The intern can draw Brazil, the finance manager can end up with terrible luck, and the person who claims they "don't even watch football" somehow ends up top of the leaderboard by the quarter finals.

Honestly, I built playdrawr because organising sweepstakes is usually a pain. Chasing entry fees, updating spreadsheets, answering "who have I got again?", manually checking standings, and trying to work out who's actually winning gets old very quickly. I basically wanted to remove all the faff and build something where you create the draw, share one link, and let the tournament run itself.

Once the World Cup starts, that's when playdrawr really comes alive — automatic leaderboard updates, live standings, knockout progression, payment tracking, and participant access without logins.

Over the last few days I've also launched premium features. Not as a cash grab, but because keeping playdrawr free for thousands of players means I've had to properly upgrade parts of the platform as usage has grown. Some of the newer features and infrastructure genuinely cost money to run at scale, so premium helps support that while still keeping the core experience free for most people.

The support so far has honestly been incredible.

A lot of people have already sent feedback, bug reports, feature ideas, and suggestions over the last few weeks. Some of you have also managed to break things in ways I genuinely didn't think were technically possible. Fair play. Every bit of feedback has helped improve the platform massively ahead of kickoff and I genuinely appreciate it.

The countdown is officially on now. The draw debates are coming, the "it's coming home" optimism is warming up nicely, and somewhere out there someone is about to accidentally draw the eventual World Cup winners.

If you haven't started your sweepstake yet, now's probably the time.

Because once that opening whistle goes, the real fun begins.

— Callum
Founder, playdrawr