Player props became an important point of differentiation, particularly in Latin America. We saw strong interest in narratives built around players to score, passes, assists, corners and goals within particular periods of a match.


Were there any teams or storylines that produced unexpected betting patterns?


Cape Verde was the story of the tournament for me. Tey disrupted the market when they secured a draw against Spain, having gone into the match at around 12/1.


Tere was heavy interest in Spain’s attacking players to score, but Cape Verde kept them out. Tey continued to impress beyond that match, while the story surrounding their goalkeeper and the growth of his social media following was fantastic.


Te African nations generally performed very well. Although none progressed as far into the tournament as some might have hoped, they made a major contribution to the competition.


How has the balance between pre-match and in-play betting evolved since Qatar 2022?


Live betting has been central to the industry for a long time, so I would not say the World Cup created a fundamental change. We continue to see more than 70 per cent of turnover and tickets coming from live betting. It’s how many people now engage with top-level sport, whether it is football, basketball or tennis. Betting acts as a second-screen experience. A customer watches the match, sees a pattern developing and responds to it - perhaps by betting on a player to score during the next 10 minutes.


In-play betting is already firmly established, but it is also becoming stronger within newly regulated and developing markets. Processing hundreds of millions of tickets creates a significant technology challenge. Where was the greatest strain?


Volumes are growing, as are customer-service demands and the need to process transactions and deliver data in real time with increasingly low latency. We have grown alongside those demands and prepared for them by adopting technologies, including cloud infrastructure, that allow us to scale. We encountered very few technology issues during this World Cup, which is something we are extremely proud of.


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Availability comes first for our sportsbook clients. We must be able to deliver the services for which they rely on us. During this tournament, I believe we demonstrated a very high level of consistency and quality.


With so much automation and live data, where does human expertise still make a difference?


Te operation is not entirely autonomous. We still have a large team working across production, data validation, pricing, odds and the offers being delivered to clients. Tere is automation supporting those processes, and we are making extensive use of AI within Managed Trading Services, particularly for identification and automated player profiling. However, we still need people to protect quality, support clients and manage exceptions. People are working around the clock, 24/7. We are proud of our technology, but we are equally proud of the people behind it.


Te World Cup was described as the industry’s biggest stress test. Were operators sufficiently prepared?


Te feedback from our clients, together with what we observed from their products, suggests that the vast majority were well prepared.


Operators understood that success was not simply about having the correct odds on their websites. Teir services and systems had to remain available, their bonusing had to work correctly and their products had to attract the right customers for the right reasons. Our MTS clients were ready for the tournament. Although the World Cup is a huge event, delivering at scale is what sportsbooks and their suppliers do throughout the year. Te bigger challenge was how each operator could stand out, which becomes a question of marketing and acquisition.


What lasting effect could the tournament have on football and sportsbook engagement in the US?


We have said ahead of previous World Cups that football could finally take off in the US, but this tournament feels significant. Colleagues in our New York office were watching the matches and were highly engaged, while US sportsbooks reported very positive activity from their customers.


Te country also has Lionel Messi playing there every week. If the combination of Messi and hosting the biggest football tournament in history cannot increase engagement, it is


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