Fifa announces world cup 2018 betting turnover of US$160 billion

Soccer’s world governing body, Fifa, has released global betting figures in relation to the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

Fifa has estimated the global betting turnover for the World Cup 2018 was US$159.7 billion.

This resulted in an average universal turnover of approximately US$2.4 billion for each game, with the final between France and Croatia attracting US$8.2 billion.

Fifa’s services provider, Swiss sports data company Sportradar, carried out the analysis of the setting behaviour during the tournament and declared the competition was free of any obvious evidence of manipulation of matches.

A Fifa statement read: ‘Sportradar’s fraud detection system monitored over 550 betting operators worldwide, generating some alerts during the competition, which are easily explained by markets adjusting the opening odds after the first match or two were played.

‘Following an in-depth, qualitative analysis of the overall volume and movement odds within the betting market, no matches at the 2018 Fifa World Cup Russia were found to be suspicious of match manipulation or betting fraud.’