Shocking numbers: more than $7 billion in bets on the World Cup sports

Football is no longer decided inside the green rectangle alone. In the world of betting, in which hundreds of billions of dollars flow annually, a yellow card, a corner kick, or even a goalkeeper’s delay in resuming play may become an event worth millions of dollars to gamblers, and opens the door for organized crime networks to infiltrate the most popular games in the world.

Behind the clamor of the crowds, the lights of the stadiums, and the huge sponsorship deals, a report by Al Jazeera describes what is currently taking place as a hidden battle between sports federations and betting networks, a battle that is no longer limited to gamblers, but has extended to referees, players, officials and club presidents, raising a question that has become troubling to fans of the game: Is what is happening inside the stadium the result of a real sports competition, or the fruit of deals concluded away from the eyes of the fans?

As for the current edition of the World Cup, betting experts expected the value of legal online bets to reach $3.1 billion, in addition to about $2.37 billion via predictions platforms. A British economic newspaper revealed weeks before the final match that the volume of bets on the identity of the world champion via one of the predictions platforms amounted to $1.8 billion, in the largest betting operation of its kind ever, bringing the total bets on the 2026 World Cup to approximately $7.3 billion.

One of the most prominent moments in this story was in August 2004, when the Paderborn team, coming from the lower divisions, met Hamburg, a German League club, in the first round of the German Cup.

At first, everything seemed normal; Hamburg took a two-goal lead within the first half hour, and came close to deciding the match, before events took a dramatic turn.

German referee Robert Heuser awarded a penalty kick that sparked widespread controversy, then showed the red card to the Hamburg striker, changing the course of the match, and Paderborn succeeded in overturning the result and winning by four goals to two.

The big scandal

It was not long before the scandal broke, as investigations revealed that the referee had deliberately influenced the outcome of the match in favor of a betting network, and after a period of denial, he admitted to receiving thousands of euros from the owner of a sports bar in Berlin in exchange for tampering with the results of a number of matches, as part of a fraud worth about two million euros (about 2.16 million dollars), while he personally received about sixty-seven thousand euros (about 72 thousand dollars), in addition to a luxury television set.

But this issue was only a small part of a much larger picture. Football alone accounts for about 56 percent of the organized sports betting market in the world, a market whose value in 2024 will reach about $570 billion.

In Europe, the size of the gambling market reached 123.4 billion euros (about 133.3 billion dollars) during the same year, an increase of five percent compared to 2023, while sports betting alone recorded revenues amounting to about twenty billion euros (about 21.6 billion dollars), including 13.7 billion euros (about 14.8 billion dollars) via the Internet, compared to 6.4 billion euros (about 6.9 billion dollars) through traditional means.

However, the legal market represents only one side of the scene. According to a guide prepared by the International Criminal Police in cooperation with the Asian Horse Racing Federation, up to 80 percent of sports and racing bets around the world are made illegally.

Estimates indicate that the money traded in this market ranges between $340 billion and $1.7 trillion annually, while about $140 billion is laundered through sports betting every year, or approximately ten percent of the total proceeds of organized crime in the world.

Despite this huge size, betting companies do not always operate in secret, but rather have become part of the sports scene.

In the English Premier League, advertisements for these companies are spread inside stadiums and on players’ shirts, and according to a British economic newspaper, eleven clubs during the 2025-2026 season are linked to sponsorship contracts with betting or gambling companies, while these partnerships extend to billboards, shirt sleeves, digital advertisements, and agreements directed to markets outside Europe.

This spread prompted the English Premier League to take a decision to prevent the logos of betting companies from appearing on the front of match shirts starting from the 2026-2027 season, while maintaining the rest of the forms of sponsorship.

New betting methods

At the same time, betting methods have developed remarkably. Betting is no longer limited to the winning or losing team, but rather includes the finer details of the match. Such as the number of corner kicks, the time when a player receives a yellow card, a defender committing a violation in a specific minute, or the goalkeeper being late in resuming play.

These events may not affect the outcome of the match, but they may generate huge profits for gamblers, which makes luring a player or referee to implement them easier than manipulating the final result.

Thus, manipulation networks began to expand around the world. In 2013, European investigations revealed a huge network that was managed from Singapore and was involved in the manipulation of about 680 matches, including matches in the World Cup qualifiers, the European Championship, and the European Champions League.

The investigations included about 380 matches in Europe, and 300 other matches in Africa, Asia, South and Central America, while investigators spoke of bribes amounting to one hundred thousand euros (about 108 thousand dollars) per match.

In Italy, between 2011 and 2012, a new scandal broke out involving 22 clubs, 52 players, and 33 matches, amid accusations that a network from the Balkan region paid money to players in exchange for tampering with the results or the number of goals.

The case ended with Atalanta deducting six points and banning team captain Cristiano Doni for three and a half years.

The investigations later extended to Türkiye, where in December 2025, the Public Prosecution ordered the detention of 46 people, including players, club presidents, and sports commentators, as part of a broad investigation into betting.

Before that, the Turkish Federation suspended 149 referees and assistant referees after it was revealed that officials in league competitions were involved in betting on matches.

These facts demonstrate that betting networks no longer only target results, but rather have the ability to penetrate various aspects of the game, taking advantage of huge funds, modern technologies, and cross-border networks.

Therefore, FIFA prohibits players, referees, officials and agents from participating, directly or indirectly, in any betting related to football, warning that this phenomenon has become one of the most serious threats facing the integrity of the game.

Despite these restrictions, the question remains: Can laws and oversight protect football from the influence of a market in which hundreds of billions of dollars are traded annually, or will betting networks continue to invent new ways to manipulate the results of matches and undermine fans’ confidence in the most popular game in the world?