Every office runs some version of a World Cup sweepstake, and in 2026 there are free tools that make the draw effortless: pick a pool size, hit a button, everyone gets their teams. But easy to set up and still fun in six weeks are not the same thing. Before you commit the office to one format, it is worth knowing how the two main options actually play out across a 48-team, 104-match tournament.
The random-draw sweepstake
Everyone is assigned teams out of a hat, or via a seeded draw that spreads the strong and weak sides fairly. It is usually winner-takes-all, sometimes with a few bonus prizes for the top scorer or the first team knocked out. The free generators do the draw and the admin for you, and for a quick bit of fun it is hard to beat.
The catch is simple: your involvement ends the moment your teams go out. In a 48-team tournament most people are drawn at least one weaker side, and a good chunk are mathematically done by the end of the group stage. Bonus prizes soften the blow, but for the majority of the office the sweepstake is effectively over by week two, long before the knockouts that everyone actually wants to watch together.
When a draw is the right call
- You want a five-minute novelty, not a six-week competition
- The group is small, say 4 to 8 people, so everyone holds several teams
- Nobody minds that pure luck decides the whole thing
- You only want one winner and maybe a couple of side prizes
The prediction league
Instead of being handed teams, everyone predicts the matches. Points for correct results and exact scores, a running leaderboard, and it updates after every game. There is skill involved, plus enough luck to keep it open, and crucially everyone is still playing in the final, whether or not any particular team is still in the tournament.
Sweepup is the prediction-league version built for offices: one 6-character code to join, no accounts, about five minutes a week, automatic scoring, a private leaderboard, and Slack or Teams updates after every result. The person running it sets it up once and never touches a spreadsheet again.
When a league wins
- You want the whole office engaged for the full tournament, not just week one
- You have a mix of die-hards and people who just want in on the fun
- You want it to stay fair, so anyone can climb the table with good calls
- You want department-vs-department banter running all the way to the final
The honest difference
A draw is a result you check twice. A prediction league is a competition you play. Both are genuinely fun, they just last different lengths of time. If the goal is one afternoon of working out who got Brazil, a free draw is perfect and you should use one. If the goal is six weeks of the whole company talking about it, the draw will not get you there, because most people are out of it before the knockouts even begin.
Set up your office prediction league: one code, your whole company, all 104 matches, automatic scoring. One-time from £49, with a full refund any time before kick-off. Start your league
Can you run both?
Plenty of offices do exactly that. Use a free draw for the novelty on day one, and a prediction league as the season-long competition that keeps everyone involved through to the final. They are not mutually exclusive, they just do different jobs: one is the icebreaker, the other is the thing people are still checking on their phones in July.