The Grand National continued to reign supreme across Entain’s sports betting markets in 2025, but the bookmaker’s yearly roundup shows that aside from this horse racing was outshone by football and American football.

Closing off 2025, Entain revealed its 50 biggest sporting events of the year – unsurprisingly, the list consisted of the biggest high-profile, one-off fixtures that drive betting interest among both casual sports fans and more die hard followers.

Topping the list was the UK Grand National, easily the biggest betting event in the UK sports calendar. The Ladbrokes Coral retail and online brands are core companies for Entain, and play a huge role in the UK space, while the Grand National also captures international attention as one of the world’s biggest horse races.

The event topping the list is hardly a shock development. However, it is telling that the Grand National is one of only two horse racing fixtures in Entain’s top 20, the other being the Cheltenham Festival’s Gold Cup in 14th. The remainder are spread across football, American football, and golf.

Horse racing was surpassed by football as the UK’s most bet on sport back in 2019. While it still remains a big betting product, according to the latest figures from the Horseracing Betting Levy Board (HBLB) showed that betting turnover per race dropped 8% year-over-year from 2023/24 to 2024/25.

Super betting on the Super Bowl

Second place on Entain’s list was the Super Bowl, something which can likely be attributed to traffic from the company’s US joint venture, BetMGM – though probably not entirely.

The Super Bowl has become a global event, with its audience spanning way beyond US borders. Over 3.5 million turned in to Sky Sports and ITV in the UK to watch Super Bowl LVII last year alone, for example.

A sizable portion of this audience will have crossed over into betting, with a sub-portion of this betting audience filling out betslips with Ladbrokes and Coral. The same can be said for Bwin in Entain’s key continental European markets.

Another factor driving Super Bowl engagement last year may have been celebrities. The Travis Kelce effect was documented in America as the Kansas City Chiefs’ quarterback’s widely publicised relationship with singer Taylor Swift helped push engagement with consumers who traditionally had little interest in sports.

American football was featured twice in Entain’s 2025 breakdown, however. The AFC AFC Championship game between Buffalo Bills at Kansas City Chiefs was the fourth biggest sports event for the company, showing that the Super Bowl is not the only betting magnet in the sport.

“The Grand National and the Super Bowl are cultural phenomena that transcend sports and are annual traditions for recreational customers,” said Greg Ferris, Managing Director of Sports at Entain.

‘Beyond these leading top two events, the diversity in the top 50 of different sports reflects our global reach and the varied passions of millions of fans worldwide.”

Football focus

Outside of American football, no one will be surprised to learn that football was a big souce of engagement for Entain during 2025. The Champions League final between Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Milan was the fifth biggest event of the year, while the semi-final and quarter-final were 10th and 11th respectively.

Interestingly though, the Club World Cup final between Chelsea and PSG and the semi final between PSG and Real Madrid were seventh and eighth – coming ahead of the Champions League semi and quarter finals.

This is noteworthy as other companies, like Betsson and Kambi, had also observed that the Club World Cup final was a decent betting event in 2025, but that it did not compare to the success of the Euros the year before.

The picture could be very different in 12 months, however. The FIFA World Cup is taking place in June and July this summer across the US, Mexico and Canada, and the final will be a solid contender for Entain’s top sports event of 2026.