The Odd Odds Movements: Three Games in the World Cup had massive shifts in gambling odds

While the world focused on 'Red card gate', Donald Trump, Gianni Infantino and the scandal around Folarin Balogun, there were three games at the FIFA World Cup that had strange, massive odd movements.

Funny, you should mention that….

The New York Times’ Jacob Whitehead has just come out with an excellent article about betting irregularities at the FIFA World Cup. It came out the very day that I was posting an article on the same subject.

The team at the University of New Haven including experts at the research team Jixy.gg - having been monitoring the World Cup for irregular betting patterns around the tournament.

I hate putting this kind of report so I dragged my heels to do it. I hate writing about irregular betting patterns because there are a thousand reasons why an odds market could go up and down. Many of those reasons are perfectly legal.

However, I finally got around to writing the report because on Tuesday I read that the FIFA Integrity Group had just proudly announced that “FIFA Integrity Task Force identifies no suspicious betting activity during FIFA World Cup 2026”

Ummmm…

I am not sure which World Cup they were monitoring but it certainly was not the same one that we were. Nor, was it the same World Cup that one of their constituent groups - The Council of Copenhagen - monitored. They came up with seven ‘yellow alerts’ and twelve potential corruption infractions in matches for irregular betting.

Our analysis was tighter. We only came up with three matches that we thought should be studied/investigated because of irregular betting. Again this is not to necessarily say that there was corruption in these games - just because the market moves dramatically does not mean that there was corruption.

Here then is my original article that I was just about to print when I saw the New York Times’ superb piece.

**

I loathe writing this article.

I do it for two reasons: one, it is true. Someone, somewhere made an awful lot of money during the World Cup with bets that moved the sports gambling market in a massive way. Bets measured in millions, if not tens-of-millions-of-dollars.

Two, no one else is doing it. After the ridiculous and credibility challenging bromance between the President of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, and Donald Trump, it is clear that there is no official body actually looking after the integrity of the World Cup.

There are various sports integrity companies that are paid to do this work by FIFA. There is an FBI department of that is supposed to guard sports against match-fixing. There are various companies who work with FIFA to ensure the integrity of the tournament. There is even a department inside FIFA charged with protecting the sport. But none of those august institutions will publicly say anything that will challenge the fifteen billion dollars in the profits that FIFA made from this tournament.

The sports integrity companies that, as the researchers of the University of New Haven do, monitor the betting odds. They are paid by FIFA. This is a walking, talking conflict of interest. There is a reason why meat inspectors are paid by the government not by the companies to protect our food supply. What normal, self-interested person is ever going to publicly announce that there are potential problems on the sports gambling market while being paid by the company (FIFA) that is running the same tournament?

It is the same for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, what sane, self-interested investigator in such a politically-directed organization as the FBI is now (its former Director James Comey is facing criminal charges for posting a photo of rocks on a beach that President Trump did not like) is going to investigate any potential match-fixing in a sports tournament that MUST go well for the President electoral reasons? And “must go well” means no corruption scandals.

It should not be left up to the Sports Integrity Center of the University of New Haven to point out that there were three games with odd odds movements at the World Cup… but it seems there is no one else will do it - so we have to.

The Analysis

“I have taken money for a few games. This [match-fixing] has been going on for years. The most recent case is from the last season. In this case it was just a normal league game. We had gone to the game as the underdog and so the loss did not surprise anybody…”
Finnish match-fixing player discussing the tactics of corrupting games.

Please reader, I trust you to understand what I write: odd movements are not necessarily indications of a fixed match. There are lots of reasons why odds move on the sports gambling market: injuries to key players, announcement of the team line-up, weather conditions, an eerie prediction on the Simpsons TV show, etc.

There are lots of honest players, referees and match officials that would never fix a game in a thousand years.

However, these odds shifts are worth noting simply because the volume of money bet on every World Cup game is massive. In the previous 32-team, 64-game format of the tournament each game would have approximately one billion dollars placed on it. For the big matches, semi-finals or finals- the amount would be in the billions. For this World Cup, the legal market shattered all the previous records in the total amount gambled and that is just the amounts that we can see. There are still massive amounts of money bet with the offshore bookmakers that does not show up on the estimates.

This is the first time since 2014, that there was an odd movement so large that it could shift the market during a World Cup tournament. In most games, the liquidity on the games simply any attempt to analyze it.

These are matches that should be investigated. Again, this does not mean that they were fixed matches just that there are odd odd movements.

All of the games follow the usual pattern.

They were in the opening round of games. Either second or third games.
They were lopped-side victories where the team that the market expected to win did so but by more than the spread of the gambling market. This means that their victories were actually counted as victories by the bookmakers. You can see in the quote above from the player in the Finnish soccer league this is how match-fixing works: bribe the weaker team to give you certainty.

Then a player said, “The first [goal] must come immediately. Even be­fore the people take their seats. That way it is not noticed so much. And then two more, as they develop, but all in the first half.”
“And in the second?”
A player laughed. “In the second we all lie down and take a nap.”

There were goals in the first fifteen minutes which is a favourite trick of corrupted players, as the excerpt from the masterful The Miracle of Castel di Sangre shows.
There were red cards.
There were own goals.
There were sudden odds movements.
There were matches that followed the pattern of the market but were above the spread. Thereby making it easier, if a fixer was involved, in potentially fixing the game.

The three games are Senegal vs. Iraq, Portugal vs. Uzbekistan and Qatar vs. Canada.

I emphasize very, very clearly - there are lots of honest, decent people - players, referees, officials - who are not corrupt. The odds movements - both before and during these games - may be completely innocent.

But these matches should be investigated just in case there was something wrong.

Sadly, there is no one seemingly, inside FIFA, who will do a proper investigation.

Sigh.