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 volume of bets this summer, Edge automatically adjusts pricing based on each operator’s liabilities with an entire fixture’s view (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 this impact on the world stage. Since the introduction of VAR, there has been a 6% decline in straight red cards – but that is likely due to teams being mindful of the scenario, rather than VAR’s direct impact.
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 separated themselves out but not by much. You can see by the prices that even all the way 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 likeGermany v Curaçao or Brazil v Haiti represent some of the least competitive games in the tournament.
You would expect the strong nations to almost be guaranteed a passage to the latter stages, due to the increased in teams that qualify from the group stage. With more of those teams in 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 above, the difference in the teams is large, and the stronger teams are further spread out. 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 in the tournament that is balanced out.
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). This is after a significant dip in Germany ‘06 (2.3) and South Africa ‘10 (2.27), which were the second and third lowest average scoring World Cups on record.
It is fascinating to see the effect that the current playing style of the day reflects in the numbers. Germany ’06 was lower than usual after a period of dominance from José Mourinho, and then the iconic tiki-taka style taken on by Spain in 2010 that saw them win every game in the knockout rounds 1-0.
8 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 the 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 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.
to understanding the possible routes to the final for teams in the outright winner market, particularly once the tournament is underway?
Most outright models use a simulation and can adjust for the various routes for the final so I don’t think this is an issue.
How does the rise of bet builders influence pricing strategies and risk management in individual markets, if at all?
The rise of same-game parlays (SGPs) has been phenomenal 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.
SGPs can, however, create hidden liabilities due to the huge array of related selections across different combinations. The last World Cup final was a great example of this where Messi and Mbappé had great personal games and there were lots of goals.
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 bet flow.
Edge solves this problem. By adjusting the pricing where liabilities are in real-time, we are able to find the right price for each individual customer before a problem even appears. And because we can correlate liabilities across all markets, Edge optimizes pricing to grow margin on a fixture level.
What role does automation and AI play in managing an intense period of matches and the data generated?
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 dealing with, it is difficult for traders to keep pace manually. It is no longer a pre-match driven world with a few main markets, but about in-play, betbuilder, player markets and fast formats of betting.
A large amount of trading is already automated, with a manual focus placed on monitoring. This allows for trading resource to be focused instead on creating more niche betting content such as pre-built SGPs, price boosts and special markets.
In the short-term, I think the biggest use of AI will be the contextualization of betting products. Think Amazon and Spotify – that is where the betting experience wants to be. But there is a big gap between this goal and where the betting experience is today.
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.
Can it cope with unusual ‘black swan’ events such as Ronaldo’s last minute illness ahead of the 1998 final? The answer is probably no. Most odds compilation already understands the impact of individual players, and the impact should they get injured – however this is often only after an injury has been previously reported.
There is no ability to predict this kind of scenario before it happens using AI alone. The best AI is built on huge amounts of data – and this specific data does not exist on a large enough scale. AI is fantastic at reacting quickly and correlating to other market signals that might not be immediately obvious.
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?
The big trend we are seeing is operators focusing more on their local betting activity. Maximising their offering and their profitability really requires that local focus.
Edge enables operators to maximise World Cup revenues regardless of the region, by delivering automated liability-driven odds at scale. Paired with our models, our clients strike the perfect balance between maximizing bets (with high uptime) and reducing liabilities to get more margin.
In Africa, sportsbooks see a higher proportion of pre-match bets, including accumulators with lots of legs, and low stakes for high returns. Yet in Asian markets, operators face sharper, single-betting behaviour.
On a macro-level, the global trend is towards player betting and bringing that focus in play, with a continued rise of betbuilder betting at major international tournaments. It is why we have added new player prop markets to our MultiBet solution and expanded our PreBuilt offering to meet this demand.