Thomas Holland, VP of Product at Genius Sports, talks to Gaming Intelligence about the provider’s approach to pricing the largest event of the year, the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
How are you approaching the largest/longest World Cup from a pricing perspective?
With our new simulation models, every football game is approached in the same way. It begins by modelling each possession, and building-up the match from there. We apply a number of factors including historical data, market signals, liability data via our Edge solution, and then our in-house trading expertise to optimise odds.
At a tournament like the World Cup, Edge is especially crucial. Operators’ liabilities vary regionally – especially when the local nation plays. In England, fans will get behind England and back Harry Kane in the goalscorer markets. Betting activity will be different in Spain, and then different again in South Africa.
With the high volume of bets this summer, Edge automatically adjusts pricing based on each operator’s liabilities on each fixture (for example, price changes to balance risk across related markets like Both Teams to Score and Total Goals). It is a powerful way to increase trading margin.
Does the expansion mean that data models from previous tournaments are less valid as a guide to 2026?
It is much bigger than just data from specific tournaments. To price football matches accurately, it is about expertise and scale. We trade more than 90,000 football games a year across a range of leagues and scenarios. This gives us huge amounts of data and trading expertise which results in incredibly efficient pricing.
Rule differences at this summer’s tournament will require an altered approach. Cooling breaks, for example, will affect game momentum and provide an opportunity to reset. The weather will likely favour the nations used to warmer climates, such as South American teams.
VAR usage is the other major change. VAR will now review incorrect corner kicks and second yellow cards, that would ordinarily result in a sending off. I’m interested to see the impact of this on the world stage. Since the introduction of VAR, there has been a 6% decline in straight red cards – but it’s difficult to attribute this directly to VAR.
Do you assess it as being a more competitive tournament?
One big observation this year is that there is no clear and obvious World Cup favourite. Spain and France have edged ahead of the others but not by much. Looking at the prices, you can see that all the way down to Portugal there is not a huge difference.
Secondly, the disparity in strength between the elite teams in the groups and those lower in the rankings is significant. Games like Germany v Curaçao or Brazil v Haiti represent some of the least competitive games in the tournament.
You would expect the strong nations almost to be guaranteed a passage to the latter stages, due to the increase in the number of teams that qualify from the group stage. With more of those teams likely to progress to the later rounds, it means highly competitive games through the knockouts.
Could the expansion of teams mean some high-scoring games in the early stages, influencing the over/under goals markets?
Definitely, and this will be built into pricing across pre-tournament and pre-match markets. More teams mean a big difference in quality across the tournament, especially in the group stage, and the elite teams won’t be holding back.
As I mentioned, the difference between the teams in terms of quality is large, and the stronger teams are spread out across more groups. You would expect to see a higher number of goals on average in the group phase games, but we might find as we get later into the tournament that is balanced out and games get tighter.
Qatar ‘22 actually had the highest average goals per game (2.69) since the World Cup was last hosted in North America at USA ‘94 (2.71). Germany ‘06 (2.3) and South Africa ‘10 (2.27) were the second and third lowest average scoring World Cups on record.
Eight best third-placed teams will qualify from the groups to the knockout stages. Does this add a level of complexity to pricing up some markets and related contingencies?
Not really. Most teams will be trying to win all their games to finish as high as possible in the group. The dynamic of the third and final group game might look different in scenarios where both teams have already qualified (given the increased number of teams that make it through). We’ll be watching this closely – more teams with something to play for means we could also see more teams playing for a specific result, such as a draw.
How does the rise of betbuilders influence pricing strategies and risk management in individual markets, if at all?
The rise of betbuilder has been a phenomena for the betting industry, and Genius was at the forefront of this back at the 2018 World Cup. They are a huge turnover driver, especially at major tournaments where every game is on TV and users can combine team and player narratives.
Betbuilders can, however, create hidden liabilities due to the huge array of related selections across different combinations and the potential for multiple outcomes to come in at once. The last World Cup final was a great example of this where Messi scored twice, Mbappé scored a hattrick, there were six goals, and the game went to penalties.
From a trading standpoint, these liabilities often are not seen until it is too late and, at the World Cup, liabilities rack up fast due to the large betting volumes.
Edge solves this problem. By adjusting pricing based on how liabilities are spread in real-time, Edge optimises pricing for each individual customer. And because Edge understands how liabilities correlate across all markets, it optimises pricing to grow margin on a fixture level.
What role does automation and AI play in managing an intense period of matches?
It is clear that automation and AI are the future of trading. With the pace of the game, the number of markets and the amount of data that sportsbooks are now dealing with, it is difficult for traders to keep pace manually.
Online betting is no longer driven by pre-match volume across a few main markets. In-play now dominates and turnover is spread across betbuilder, player markets and fast markets.
A large amount of trading is already automated, meaning a lot of a trader’s time is now spent monitoring markets. However, this also allows for trading resource to be focused instead on creating niche betting content such as pre-built markets, betbuilders, price boosts and special markets.
In the short-term, I think the biggest use of AI will be the contextualisation of betting products. Think of the recommendations you get from Amazon and Spotify – this is the level of personalisation sportsbooks should aspire to.
When it comes to trading, the reality is a hybrid approach is the answer. Automation is vital, but the need for knowledge and expertise will never go away.
Any new/interesting betting markets on offer for this World Cup?
Expect an even bigger focus on promotional markets. The World Cup is an enormous customer acquisition opportunity. Sportsbooks are constantly looking for ways to attract new, first-time customers with favourable offers and boosts such as 2-up and Super Sub, which turn popular betting markets into a great acquisition driver.
Any geographical trends across your clients in different markets? Are some bet types or markets particularly popular in different regions?
Every tournament, operators look to offer a more localised betting product, but doing this while maximising profitability at the same time can be challenging.
That’s why we’re seeing widespread adoption of Edge for the World Cup. It enables operators to maximise World Cup profits and still offer price boosts and odds offers. Edge works within the margin threshold set by the customer.
Paired with our trading models, our sportsbook customers strike the perfect balance between maximising betting turnover (with high uptime) and profitability.
There are some key regional differences in betting behaviour. In Africa, sportsbooks see a higher proportion of pre-match bets, including long-shot style accumulators with low stakes for high returns. Yet in Asian markets, operators face sharper betting behaviour on singles markets.
On a macro-level, the global trend is towards more betting on player markets and with more of that now happening in-play and via betbuilder. It is why we have added new player prop markets to MultiBet, our betbuilder solution, while our PreBuilt feature surfaces contextual pre-packaged betbuilder selections in-game.