Modeling the unknown 

Pricing a 48-team tournament is different from pricing, for example, the Premier League. International squads play together infrequently, so there’s less data available. And the expanded format brings in nations that Flutter hasn’t priced before, from Curaçao to Cape Verde. 

To bridge that gap, Flutter ran an internal mock World Cup draw, where traders from around the world were assigned a team and their players to research and price. Several stepped forward and asked to work on specific teams based on their own personal heritage or bespoke local knowledge, with the collective findings feeding into the 50,000-plus unique player markets being compiled in-house. 

The pricing challenges for the team are at the edges – minnows whose form and players are unknown, and the final group games where qualified teams could rest star players. Malachy Rooney, Flutter’s UKI Head of Football Strategy and Pricing, pointed to the opening match of the 2022 tournament, when host nation Qatar were widely expected to be competitive at home but were beaten 2-0 by Ecuador. “The entire market got Qatar wrong. It quickly became apparent that they were completely out of sorts.” 

Rule changes need pricing in, too. FIFA’s yellow-card amnesty between group and knockout stages, for example, reduces jeopardy for players, which Flutter expects to increase card counts.  

There are also new products, such as a penalty shootout experience which lets customers bet on where in the goal a penalty will be placed, priced across six sections of the net. Having gone live just in time for the Champions League Final, which Arsenal lost to PSG on penalties, the new product will come into play in the knockout rounds, and Flutter believes it is a first of its kind. The question, Rooney says, was how best to price the product: chase data on every individual taker, or start from the macro pattern of where penalties tend to be scored and layer in the players who reliably favor one corner. 

“Models are only as good as their inputs,” Rooney says. “An AI element helps us sift through the noise, but subject-matter expertise is what gets a model from 97% pricing accuracy to 100%, which is what we’re striving for.” 

Why regulation wins

The World Cup will be watched by billions. For Flutter, it is also the most visible opportunity yet to demonstrate what regulated operators do that black market ones cannot, and why that distinction matters for customers and markets alike.  

The illegal gambling market is a growing threat. In the UK, the black market could be worth £33bn by 2028; in the Netherlands, illegal operators now account for more than half of all gambling revenue. In Brazil, Flutter's own research suggests between 30% and 50% of spend still runs through unlicensed operators, even after legalization. The UNODC warns that during the World Cup, illegal betting volumes could outweigh regulated ones globally.  

The World Cup gives Flutter a global stage to prove that regulated operators don't just comply – they compete and win on quality, safety, and trust. While Flutter tailors customer safeguards to local regulations wherever it operates, its core customer safety principles are the same – to lead progress and promote positive play. Flutter aims to proactively monitor play across its platforms, detecting certain unusual patterns and giving customers reassurance that safeguards are in place. 

“Customer safety is fundamental to our overarching strategy across all brands,” says Andrew Branigan, Sports Director at Paddy Power, while John Carroll, CCO of Flutter Brazil, casts it as a matter of trust: bet with a licensed, listed operator and you can have confidence that “your details are safer, your funds will be processed legally and your withdrawals processed quickly,” which is “what you put at risk betting in the black market.”