An Op-ed from Jeevan Jeyaratnam, Chief Betting Officer of Abelson Sports
The Story so far
The overriding sentiment from those close to the action is that pre-tournament expectations around interest and engagement have been surpassed by some distance. The interest levels, from both local and visiting fans, and quality of the football has been excellent. Weather has, thus far, played only a small disruptive role, largely allaying the fears that the FIFA Club World Cup had unearthed. The football has been highly entertaining and the goals have flowed in a way not witnessed since the 1970 World Cup (2.92 goals per game thus far vs 2.97 goals per game in 1970. For comparison, Qatar 2022 featured 2.69 goals per game). Obviously the tournament has yet to finish and the goals per game number, as expected, has dropped since the knockout stages. Of course, the expanded format has meant more mismatches and an extra game for teams and players to find their rhythm so the tournament could still end up being one of the highest scoring in history.
Looking at SpreadEx’s pre-tournament total goals quote, at the start of the competition the spread midpoint was 286.5, that line now sits at 302.5. A tournament with more goals is also a tournament with more incidents. Due to the increasingly granular betting metrics now available this means more action, more interest, more engagement and, arguably, more risk. When goal averages exceed expectancies then punters start to benefit, this is a pattern we have witnessed but the most interesting shift has been in punter behaviour. With so much focus on so few games it’s natural that punters will see recency as a precursor to expectation. Perhaps betting operators and suppliers, only too aware of recency biases, and keen to avoid falling into a trap, are sometimes too slow to adapt, especially considering how many variables change between World Cups.
Punters have come for goalscorer markets in a big way after early successes for the favourites. Pre-tournament, we expected anytime goalscorers to be battling for parity, in terms of handle, with player shots and shots on target markets. What we’ve seen is a distinct shift back towards goalscorer markets as the most popular markets. Glancing at the Golden Boot leaderboard, it’s easy to understand why… Messi (8), Mbappe (7), Haaland (7), Kane (6), Dembele (4), Oyarzabal (4), Vini Jnr (4) & Ronaldo (3) have 40 goals between them already. Only Yamal, of the top tier of stars, who has been injured, has failed to fire, yet…
To put this into context, just eight players have scored 14.2% of the total tournament goals thus far. But it’s not just any eight players, it is eight global stars whose following transcends the popularity of their clubs or leagues. This group of players form the hottest properties in football, they dominate feeds, drive conversation, and shape betting interest to such a degree that when they all show up and perform is not only justification of their status but also a recreational punter’s dream combination. This creates a ‘perfect storm’ scenario for operators, these are the bets they want to encourage but in a World Cup environment with no competing football distractions, this concentration of attention also amplifies volatility. When the biggest names all show up, the upside for engagement is enormous, but so is the exposure.
In terms of how this played out during June, we need only look at two matchdays. On June 16th, with France, Norway and Argentina all playing on the same day Mbappe (2), Haaland (2) and Messi (3) proceeded to score 7 goals between them. This was a damaging result on its own, but worse was to come as the trio performed the 2+ goals feat again on June 22nd. This time punters were primed and expectant, and at odds ranging from 91.00 to 121.00, the to score 2+ parlay was an incredibly popular and hugely damaging selection, taking firms potentially from a position of tournament props profitability to a position of negative margin. There would be no escape for bookies and despite a good run of results to see June out, another Mbappe’s brace on the 30th ensured that there would be no great escape for the month.
July has started pretty well, despite Messi, Haaland, Kane and Mbappe netting, and on the whole the wider stats markets have done very well throughout the tournament. It’s simply the goalscorer markets that are causing the damage. There are a number of reasons to be positive, though. The books that have larger recreational bases will likely attract more player prop handle. That handle is likely heavily weighted towards favs and the parlay/SGP mix will also be greater. Taking this into account you’d expect those operators with ‘better’ (higher portion of recreational clients) client bases to be the ones suffering most at this stage. That bodes very well for them generally and I’m sure those such operators will be seeing increased cross-vertical play, whether that be casino, virtual or other sports wagering. The ecosystem thrives on liquidity and at the moment there is plenty of that. There’s one metric in particular that has wildly underperformed due in the main to incredibly lenient refereeing. SpreadEx opened the tournament with its total yellow cards book at 393-408 but with the “so far” total at 231, the quote is currently just 271.5-273.5!
Operators, while hoping for good results, also understand the principles behind recycling of clients’ money. It benefits nobody to drain punter’s funds too quickly and with the knock-out stages starting to take-off, and with the MLS and Brazil Serie A competitions resuming play before the final is played, there is rightly a focus on retaining the football-fever momentum as the World Cup ends.
Pricing & Risk
There’s another school of thought that suggests that the pricing hasn’t caught up with the action. So, while recreational punters are having a field day is there any sharp money also betting similar selections? With World Cups only occurring every four years there is only a small sample size of recent competitive, cross-federation international matches on which to baseline pricing models. With so many variables changing from tournament to tournament it’s hard to be over confident that what happened before is going to repeat itself this time.
It’s widely accepted that top tier club football is of a higher standard than international football and in recent times we have seen a number of global superstars that have established themselves as being ahead of their peers, even within top tier competitions. Understanding their superiority and impact at international level is more nuanced than simply applying their club rating to national team level. On top of this, those superstars have transcended the popularity of their clubs and teammates on a social or marketing level. This player-led fandom means that betting behaviours are heavily skewed towards these players regardless of price.
Kambi recently released some statistics that suggest that bets including Haaland drive 60% of Norway’s prop. handle. Messi, Mbappe, Kane and Ronaldo, even though they are in squads with other big name players, all account for up to 50%. So, are models designed to offer fair and accurate pricing, firstly not adapting to changing conditions, trends and recency and secondly, not allowing for the huge biases that these players draw. Nobody is actively tinkering with model mechanics after three weeks of a World Cup nor will anybody be looking too hard at distribution shapes which impact 2+, 3+ pricing.
At Abelson Sports, we spend a lot of time analysing player shares or percentages of expected totals. Mbappe, for instance began the tournament taking out 32.5% of France’s expected goals totals, but five games later that has risen to 37%, with room being made by reducing the share given to the other French starting players. The beauty, and the inherent risk, for operators is that they will lay these superstars blindly, regardless of price, in parlays and SGPs that will be repeated by thousands of others, creating huge highly unbalanced liabilities. The danger to operators with competitions like the World Cup, that has very little other sport distractions that can dilute risk, they will overindex on SGP and parlay liabilities- similar to Frankie Dettori at Royal Ascot going through the card – and from a business risk point of view that needs to be better managed, especially for listed businesses where investors still fail to understand the concept of variance and indeed gambling altogether.
With the advent of truly useful AI tools, I’d expect to see ever more advanced risk management solutions as operators seek to balance big odds and highly repeatable parlays during periods of intense single event focus. Whatever happens in the next two weeks, one thing seems certain, player props continue to grow in popularity and impact, taking larger and larger shares of the total football handle and bringing with them more and more excitement, engagement, and concentrated risk. Enjoy the ride!
