The World Cup of bet builders - Gaming Intelligence

How prevalent will bet builders be at this year’s FIFA World Cup, how will operators use them to create an edge, and how will they evolve?

On June 11, Mexico and South Africa will take to the field for the start of the biggest ever FIFA men’s World Cup. For the first time, 48 nations will be competing at the tournament finals, hosted by Canada, Mexico and the United States, with 104 matches culminating in the final at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19.

While there will of course, like with any World Cup, be plenty of opportunities for online sports betting (OSB) operators to target new customers and achieve substantial growth during the tournament, the finals could provide a telltale sign of which operators are gaining market share via the use of bet builders.

The growth of bet builders has been one of the most significant developments in the history of OSB, taking its place among the introductions of internet betting, mobile apps, in-play betting and cashout. The widely regarded first mover in this market was Sky Bet when it launched its ‘RequestABet’ feature in 2015. For the first time, the bettor’s choice of what to wager on was not limited to the sportsbook markets they saw in front of them.

Today, bet builders have become a part of the OSB furniture. The player is no longer limited to requesting bet builders, with trading teams and pricing models catching up to the extent that they can offer instant pricing on multiple selections within events.

Divulging on why bet builders have become so synonymous with OSB, John Wright, chief commercial officer of BetWright, tells Gaming Intelligence: “The widespread availability of granular sports data has been the key driver. Whether it’s assists, shots, bookings and passing stats in football, or break points, unforced errors and aces in tennis, customers now have the information to build genuinely informed, bespoke wagers.

“Cashout within bet builders has also been instrumental. Customers continuously assess probability through cashout value, and when it’s consistently available, it sustains engagement throughout the event.”

Bet builders have cracked America

This is a topic which is particularly prevalent in one of the three host nations of this year’s World Cup. Those within OSB in the US in recent years will have noticed how significant bet builders, or single game parlays (SGPs) as they are known in the US, have become since the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act was overturned in 2018.

According to Flutter Entertainment, SGPs accounted for 70% of all National Football League (NFL) and National Basketball Association (NBA) bets placed via its FanDuel brand in 2023. In addition, research from Deutsche Bank shows that SGP stakes as a percentage of total staking in the US went up from 19.2 per cent in 2019 to 24.3 per cent in 2023. Margins from SGPs increased from 13.1 per cent to 18.5 per cent during that period, with players increasingly showing a tendency to add more legs to their bets.

Matt Stephenson, global partnerships director at Genius Sports, explains how individuals in sport, rather than teams, may be driving this. “US sports culture is heavily driven by personalities,” he says.

“Think of the NFL—star quarterbacks and receivers who dominate the narrative. Fans want to build bets around those players. When we launched with the major US operators like DraftKings, BetMGM and FanDuel, the numbers were enormous. People wanted to combine player passing yards, receiving yards, total points, and so on into one narrative. It’s the same trend we now see globally in football: bettors want player-based markets, not just match outcomes.”

Trend reflected in football tournaments

While some of the numbers we have seen in international football tournaments are not quite as staggering as what we have seen in the NFL and NBA, they are still taking a strong hold on the share of betting. According to supplier Kambi, bet builders accounted for 24 per cent and 18 per cent of bets across the Copa America and European Championship tournaments respectively in summer 2024. Kambi processed more than 17 million bet builder bets in total during those two tournaments.

In addition to that data, Kambi’s Sports Betting Trends Report showed that at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and Euro 2024, bet builders accounted for 30 per cent and 37 per cent of all pre‑match bets respectively from the quarter‑finals onwards. During Euro 2024, bet builder users placed roughly two-and-a-half times as many bets as a non-bet builder user and wagered on more than twice as many games, pointing towards bet builders increasing engagement with players.

Ryan Hughes, head of trading at Kambi, tells Gaming Intelligence: “What we witnessed at Copa America and Euro 2024 wasn’t a sudden spike, but something that was part of a consistent, sustained rise in bet builder engagement across the global sportsbook landscape. Bettors simply want more control than ever before, and bet builder has become the format that enables that empowerment with the offering and UX also improving to drive even greater engagement.”

The numbers from Kambi certainly point towards a growing interest in bet builders, but could bet builders’ share of total bets across football/soccer markets ever get close to the 70 per cent share seen at Flutter with the NFL and NBA?

Ben Cullen, head of risk at operator Midnite, says: “It’s moving in that direction. American sports are naturally suited to that style of betting, but year-on-year we see more football customers gravitating towards it. Accumulators will always hold a big share of the UK market, but the trend is clear. Whether it reaches 70 per cent is uncertain, but it’s not unrealistic in the long term.”

Perfect opportunity

While football/soccer is generally down the list of priorities for US sports fans behind the major leagues, the World Cup is taking place at an opportune moment in the year. The NFL and NBA will be out of season, and the National Hockey League usually wraps up at some point in June when the Stanley Cup concludes, so there should only be a slight crossover.

Major League Baseball will clash with the tournament, but will also be going on a short break for the All-Star Game in July, so for the most part, operators will have a free run at online sports bettors.

In addition, this is a tournament predominantly being hosted in the US (78 of the 104 matches will be held there) and will generate national team interest, giving this event a patriotic edge over the major leagues. Focusing on the US market specifically, a point of interest will be whether the interest in bet builders translates to a major football/soccer event.

Genius Sports’ Matt Stephenson says: “I think it’s very possible we will see similar numbers to what we see in the major leagues. For US sportsbooks, the 2026 World Cup is enormous. It lands at a perfect time on their calendar.

“With multiple matches every day for weeks, operators will put huge marketing and product focus behind it. In pockets with large expat communities, you’ll see very strong engagement. I’d expect the World Cup to be one of the highest-turnover events of the year for US operators.”

Spotlight on LatAm and other continents

Outside the US, there will also be a focus on other continents. With the number of teams qualifying for the tournament finals increasing from 32 to 48 for this year’s iteration, this has led to more opportunity for teams in regions such as Latin America and Africa.

While it is difficult to officially define a country as Latin American, going by the general definition of a country in Central/South America where the predominant language is Spanish or Portuguese, there will be ten LatAm teams at this year’s World Cup. According to Genius’ data, about 50 per cent of bets on major matches on the Brazilian domestic league, the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, are staked as bet builders.

Stephenson says: “Brazil is becoming one of the world’s most important betting markets, and bet builder growth there reflects that.

“Africa is another key region with ten African teams qualifying. Traditional long-odds accumulators have always driven activity there, and bet builders—both pre-match and in-play—are a natural evolution. Retail is still big, and operators are adapting builder-style products for that environment.

“In Europe, bet builders are now mainstream. The evolution is mainly about deeper player markets and more customisation.”

How will bet builders evolve?

On the point of evolution that Stephenson mentions, as with many other things in modern technology, there will have to be a focus on how AI can take bet builders forward. The days of people requesting bets off the cuff before trading teams take the time to react with price offerings are a thing of the past. In the current climate, with players wanting more than the standard set of markets in an online sportsbook, investing in the right AI technology will allow operators to adapt to player needs.

Midnite’s Ben Cullen says: “Pricing is already heavily automated, and AI will become a major driver within the next five years. Some firms already use models with AI components. As pricing has shifted fully to model-based systems, compilers are no longer manually setting prices. AI can build extremely sophisticated models; it simply needs the data. It’s only a matter of time before pricing is almost entirely AI-driven.”

Another key next step will be to reduce suspension time during bets, which can disrupt the user experience. While the suspension of bets is put in place by operators to protect themselves, Stephenson says: “A bet builder should be available from team-sheet release through the final whistle—even into extra time—and cashout should remain seamless throughout. In the past, if any leg was suspended, you’d lose the ability to cash out, which caused a lot of customer frustration.

“A blanket approach to suspensions doesn’t make much sense. Only a tiny fraction of customers are trying to exploit latency or edge cases, yet historically everyone suffered because of that. Smarter operators now use profiled suspensions—restricting only the customers who present higher risk.”

Moving to 2030

When the greatest show in men’s international football rolls around again in 2030, with Spain, Portugal and Morocco hosting the centenary edition of the World Cup, we will be able to see how bet builders have developed in that time. According to Chris Williams, Product Director for betting agency The Pools, creating a more seamless experience during that period will be key.

“The biggest change must come from UX and smart product design,” he says. “Bet builders have gone from being nice to have to being essential. Then it became about having a wide choice of markets. That has become a lot to navigate. You need to make it easy for bettors to find their favourite markets and edit their bet as they go.”

Kambi’s Ryan Hughes adds: “Bet builders will continue to expand across more sports with far greater levels of combinability and, over time, we expect the entire sportsbook to become combinable, with far fewer structural limitations and far more freedom for players to express their preferences. Live bet builder remains comparatively early in its lifecycle, and we will likely see growth in that area as pricing models, automation and trading capabilities continue to advance.

“The biggest leap forward however, will come in the user experience. As the sportsbook offering grows in scale and complexity, presenting that content in a way that is intuitive, interactive and entertaining becomes increasingly important.”

The final run-up to the start of the tournament is here now, and while many will be wondering if it’s time for England to finally end 60 years of hurt or for Cristiano Ronaldo to get his hands on the Jules Rimet trophy at last, those inside the OSB industry will have a keen eye on how operators and suppliers will be making this the World Cup of bet builders.