Jeevan Jeyaratnam, Chief Betting Officer at Abelson Sports, breaks down the crucial lessons and shifting market trends sportsbooks need to take away from the World Cup as domestic football seasons start to get under way.
Now that the dust has settled, what lessons can we learn from the World Cup in terms of key trends, including around player props markets?
Following the success of goalscorer markets in the early phase of the tournament, we saw a larger than expected shift to betting on that market type.
Pre-tournament, we would have expected to see a much narrower gap between goalscorers and player shots as favoured options for bettors. But because of the scoring success of the favourites, and as a result, the higher than expected goals per game average, the largest concentration of money was for goalscorers, whether that be First, Anytime or To Score 2+. It was a case of bettors reacting and adjusting selections in line with those early trends.
We also learnt that localisation is crucially important. Adding standard market types that included extra-time were hugely popular for clients in North America but not offered by our European clients.
How can operators best deal with the ‘black swan’ events that we saw during the World Cup, when stars like Messi, Mbappe, Haaland and Kane all scored?
The liability scare around Messi, Mbappe and Haaland was driven by a repeat of their ‘To Score 2+’ heroics in match-day one, which cost some sportsbooks millions. Repeating the feat, at odds of around 100/1, meant that recreational punters taking chances on a recurrence were rewarded handsomely. Actually, managing risk for this particular scenario, which wasn’t a correlated bet builder, is something that operators are used to.
The bigger concerns are Bet Builders, or SGPs to use the North American parlance, which continue to be the top performing bet type, though they are also the hardest bets to manage, or assess, risk and liability. Moving forward, I expect to see more AI solutions managing correlated parlay risk along with automated pricing changes.
How can operators best ride the wave of recreational betting of the sort that we saw during the World Cup?
Operators will be awash with new signups and it’s very important that they hit the ground running now that the tournament has ended and with the focus moving on to domestic competitions. The return of the MLS, Brazil’s Serie A as well as the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish leagues before, or as the tournament closed, are great opportunities to double down on the new influx of football bettors.
The success of recreational parlays on the World Cup’s top scorers will have convinced many that betting on players is a very winnable opportunity. Of course, over the course of a season, we’d expect those players to generally revert to mean. Indeed by the end of the World Cup, margins were back to healthy proportions on player markets.
There’s also a great opportunity to cross-sell new punters to different verticals within the sportsbook.
There was a distinct relaxation from match officials in terms of issuing cards to players. Do you expect this to have an impact on pricing these markets in the upcoming domestic season, or will it be business as usual?
FIFA’s apparently lenient directives to referees was surprising and some of that leniency was nothing short of scandalous. How Paraguay didn’t pick up a card in their knock-out match with France is beyond comprehension, for example.
I certainly do not expect to see a continuation of this as domestic football gets going again and I don’t imagine we’ll see a derivation from standard trends in card quotes.
Finally, with so many star players returning from World Cup duty and having their schedules carefully managed, will this lead to more ‘shock’ early results as the leagues start up again?
There’s no doubt that an extended World Cup will have disrupted the players’ standard off-season break, but whether this leads to shock early results, I’m not so sure. Squads in the top leagues are so deep and actually the returning World Cup players may well have a fitness benefit in the early stages of the competition.
Tiredness may well catch up a little later, perhaps around Christmas, when the accumulation of games could negatively impact those players who went deep into the World Cup.
