Not every match at World Cup 2026 was equal for the people setting the odds. Blask built a match profitability index that scores every fixture on how it moved the bookmaker’s margin, not on who won. The results single out a handful of matches that paid off handsomely, and a handful that handed money straight back to players.
How the index works
Each match is scored twice. A pre-match score reads how sharply the book was positioned at kickoff, based on closing odds, margin and pre-match odds movement. A live score reads the most-played in-play markets, including 1X2, over and under totals, and specific in-play events. The two scores combine into a single signed index. A positive number means the match was profitable for the bookmaker. A negative number means players came out ahead.
The most profitable match: England 0-0 Ghana
England’s goalless draw with Ghana produced the tournament’s highest profitability score for bookmakers, at +8.8, split between a pre-match score of +3.5 and a live score of +5.4. The main driver was the 1X2 market, at +2.7. Backing England as favourites proved the most lucrative line on the board, and the match paid off across nearly every market tracked, a clean sweep for the book.
The costliest match: New Zealand 1-5 Belgium
At the other end, New Zealand’s 1-5 defeat to Belgium was the tournament’s most expensive result for bookmakers, at -10.5 (pre-match -7.05, live -3.43). The damage came almost entirely from the Total 2.5 goals market, which lost -6.5, the single biggest loss in any market across the whole tournament. Notably, the 1X2 market barely moved, at -0.6, since Belgium winning was never a surprise. It was the six-goal scoreline, not the result itself, that cost the book.
The rest of the top ten
Most profitable for bookmakers
- England 0-0 Ghana: 8.8
- Colombia 0-0 Portugal: 8.2
- Spain 0-0 Cape Verde: 8.1
- Ecuador 0-0 Curacao: 6.8
- Turkey 0-1 Paraguay: 5.7
- Belgium 0-0 Iran: 5.5
- South Africa 1-0 South Korea: 5.1
- Switzerland 2-0 Algeria: 4.9
- Norway 1-2 England: 4.7
- Curacao 0-2 Ivory Coast: 4.4
Most costly for bookmakers
- New Zealand 1-5 Belgium: -10.5
- Norway 1-4 France: -9.7
- Tunisia 1-3 Netherlands: -9.0
- Portugal 2-1 Croatia: -7.2
- Tunisia 0-4 Japan: -6.8
- Belgium 3-2 Senegal: -6.6
- Senegal 5-0 Iraq: -6.4
- Portugal 5-0 Uzbekistan: -6.1
- Germany 2-1 Ivory Coast: -5.9
- Spain 3-0 Austria: -5.6
The semifinals split in opposite directions
France’s 0-2 semi-final defeat to Spain scored +3.89, driven again by the Total 2.5 market (+1.3), a mirror image of the New Zealand-Belgium result: a low-scoring 0-2 handed the totals market to the book. England’s other semi-final against Argentina told a different story. The match started well for bookmakers, with a pre-match score of +1.7, but bled that back in-play to finish at -2.70, landing the overall index just under water at -1.00, a rare case where the pre-match and live reads pulled in opposite directions and the live market won out.
The final and the third-place playoff
The final between Argentina and Spain, decided 0-1 after extra time, scored +4.35, with almost all of the profit generated in-play as a scoreless first ninety minutes turned into a single extra-time goal. The third-place playoff, a 4-6 defeat for France against England, came in at -3.26, with the totals market driving the loss again, at -2.5, the third time in these matches that the number of goals scored, rather than who actually won, moved the book.
What the pattern shows
Across the matches Blask tracked in detail, totals markets, the over and under on goals, moved the bookmaker’s margin as much as or more than the match result itself. Low-scoring games tended to favour the book: seven of the top ten most profitable matches finished 0-0 or 1-0. High-scoring or lopsided scorelines, regardless of whether the favourite won, tended to cost it: several of the ten costliest matches for bookmakers were exactly the kind of result a pre-match favourite is supposed to deliver, just by a wider margin than the pricing accounted for.
The France-Spain and New Zealand-Belgium matches make this especially clear when read side by side. Both were built around the Total 2.5 goals market, and both ended with a similar magnitude of index movement, +1.3 for France-Spain and -6.5 for New Zealand-Belgium specifically on that one market. The difference was simply which side of the total the final scoreline landed on. A tight, low-scoring match handed the total to the book. A one-sided, high-scoring match handed it back to the players, even when the favoured team’s win was never in doubt.
Why this matters beyond the scoreline
For anyone pricing or trading football markets, the pattern in this data reinforces something experienced traders already assume but that is useful to see confirmed at tournament scale: getting the 1X2 market right is necessary but not sufficient for a profitable book. England were correctly favoured against Ghana and the match still delivered the tournament’s best result for bookmakers. Belgium were correctly favoured against New Zealand and the match still delivered the worst. In both cases the identity of the winner was predicted accurately. What separated a profitable match from a costly one was how many goals were actually scored, not who scored them.
That has a direct implication for how operators think about World Cup bookmaker profitability at the next tournament: risk management around totals markets, rather than around the match-winner market, may deserve the larger share of trading attention during high-profile fixtures involving a clear favourite.
The takeaway
Across the matches Blask scored in detail, the pattern holds fairly consistently: the number of goals scored moved the bookmaker’s margin more reliably than who actually won. England 0-0 Ghana and New Zealand 1-5 Belgium sit at opposite ends of the same underlying dynamic, both correctly-favoured results, with completely different consequences for the book depending on the final scoreline. For anyone modelling World Cup bookmaker profitability at the next major tournament, that is the signal worth carrying forward.
See the full match profitability breakdown, including the World Cup’s most personalised betting trends, in our ongoing World Cup 2026 coverage, and subscribe to The Business of iGaming newsletter for further data-led analysis.
