Bettors ahead of bookmakers at FIFA World Cup 2026: Blask analysis

Bettors came out ahead of bookmakers across the aggregate 104 matches of the FIFA World Cup 2026 football tournament, according to artificial-intelligence (AI) -powered insights by Blask, an analysis platform covering the gaming sector. Across the 104 matches involving 48 competing national teams, “bettors finished ahead on the total index: -56.91,” said Blask in a briefing on its research shared with GGRAsia. The tournament staged in North America was held from June 11 to July 19. One phase “drove more than half the swing” towards bettors, noted the analysis platform. What the tournament organisers call ‘Matchday 3’ of the group stage – held between June 24 and 27 and comprising 24 matches – “scored -29.80 on its own, 52.4 percent of the tournament’s entire deficit,” said Blask. The analysis platform referred to that phase as “Round 3” of the group stage. That was more than Matchday 1 and Matchday 2 of the group phase combined, it added. They generated respectively “-14.29 and -9.89, a joint 42.5 percent” to the overall deficit. The “single worst match of the whole tournament for bookmakers” was on Matchday 3 in Group G, stated Blask. That was New Zealand’s 1-5 loss to Belgium, “at -10.5, the tournament’s most bettor-favourable result”. Blask observed, however, that Matchday 3 of the group stage was not “uniformly bad for bookmakers”. The best result for the bookmakers during that phase was Colombia-Portugal, a 0-0 draw, which scored +8.2 on the index, “nearly matching” Matchday 2’s “own high point”. Every matchday in the group stage produced “at least one strongly bookmaker-favourable result alongside its losses; the difference is how many losses piled up around it,” stated Blask. The aggregate of 32 knockout games following the group stage were “close to even” in terms of bookmakers versus bettors, Blask said. They scored “-2.92 combined, 5.1 percent of the deficit despite being the single largest group of matches in the dataset,” said the analysis platform. The bookmakers’ best match in the knockout stage was Switzerland-Algeria, a 2-0 win for the Swiss, “at +4.9”. The worst for the industry was Portugal-Croatia, a 2-1 victory for the Portuguese, “at -7.2”. Nonetheless, both of those index results sat “well inside the range” that Matchday 3 of the group stage produced “on its own,” said Blask. The analysis service said in its summary: “No single stage was one-sided at the match level. Every round in this dataset had both a strongly bookmaker-favourable result and a strongly bettor-favourable one. Only the balance between them changed.” Matchday 3’s “-29.80 came from more matches tipping toward bettors, not from every match turning bad for bookmakers,” Blask stated. “The knockouts’ near-even score came from the opposite mechanic: enough matches on each side to roughly cancel out,” it added.