The Opta Forum is where the sports data industry sets the agenda. This year, Sofascore had a seat at the table.

Tomislav Haramustek, Product Lead at Sofascore, joined the main stage at Opta Forum 2026 at the British Museum in London as part of a panel on Activating World Cup 2026: Are You Ready to Capitalise on the Biggest World Cup Yet? The session brought together voices from across the sports tech and media landscape to discuss how platforms, brands and data providers are preparing for the most-watched sporting event on the planet.

A panel built around the World Cup opportunity

The conversation featured Jack Tarrant, Senior Communications Manager at Lenovo, who shared how the company is leveraging its role as the first Official Technology Partner of FIFA to deliver AI-powered technology solutions for this summer’s tournament. The crossover with Sofascore’s own direction was clear: both sides are building tools to enhance how football is experienced and understood, whether at the team level or by tens of millions of fans.

Oliver Hopkins of Opta Analyst rounded out the panel, offering a perspective on how Opta approaches football data visualisation for analytical audiences — a space where the direction of travel across the industry is converging around richer, more interactive presentation of data.

What Sofascore is bringing to the World Cup

Haramustek outlined three pillars Sofascore is relying on heading into the tournament: breadth and depth of data, the Sofascore Rating, and continuous innovation.

The Sofascore Rating, one of the platform’s most distinctive features, has been further refined ahead of this season. Calculated across 100+ parameters, it gives every player a match performance score on a 3.0-to-10.0 scale and remains one of the most cited individual metrics in fan and media conversations globally.

On the innovation front, Sofascore recently introduced a new generation of football pitch maps — interactive visualisations that bring match data to life in ways that go beyond static numbers. The new maps represent a significant step in how fans engage with performance data, and have set a new benchmark for what a live score platform can deliver.

Beyond visualisations, Haramustek pointed to how Sofascore’s Feed uses AI to surface relevant content for each individual user, ensuring that someone following the Moroccan national team gets a meaningfully different experience than someone obsessing over the Copa América bracket. The emphasis was clear: AI at Sofascore works in support of what already exists, not as a replacement for it.

Read more: Sofascore at SBC Summit Rio: Building Momentum in Brazil

The goal beyond the final whistle

The 2026 World Cup will drive a significant spike in new users to Sofascore. The conversation at Opta Forum went beyond just capturing that moment. Haramustek spoke about the longer-term objective: converting tournament-driven traffic into lasting engagement. The goal is to make sure that fans who discover Sofascore during the group stage are still there long after the trophy has been lifted.

It’s a challenge shared across the industry. It’s one Sofascore is building toward.