When Rodri, the captain of Spain's national team, lifted the FIFA World Cup trophy in July at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, the country erupted in celebration. After five weeks and eight matches, Spain emerged victorious, proving itself the best team on the global football stage for the second time.
While Spain reveled in its victory, Kambi reflected on a landmark achievement—its first World Cup entirely managed by artificial intelligence. Over the course of the tournament, AI was responsible for handling every aspect of the pricing lifecycle for 104 matches and over 100 million bets. From data ingestion to liability management and bet settlement, the platform demonstrated its reliability without any downtime, achieving an impressive operator trading margin of 18%. Notably, during the final, Kambi processed more than one million unique bet combinations.
Kambi aimed high, committing to fully AI-driven operations for the tournament, and by the end, their success underscored the capability of automated trading to handle the pressures of an event as massive as the World Cup, enhancing the user experience for operators and their customers.
"The FIFA World Cup garners global attention unmatched by any other sporting event, and it served as the ultimate stress test for our technology," stated Oliver Lamb, Kambi's Senior Vice President of Trading. "We provided an almost limitless array of betting combinations, presented more quickly and seamlessly than in previous offerings."
Kambi’s journey towards the 2026 World Cup began with initial investments in AI trading technology back in 2021. The system was deployed on a larger scale during the Qatar 2022 tournament and fully integrated into trading operations by 2024. By 2026, the technology had been rigorously tested over several competitive seasons, including the Premier League and the Champions League. AI was then responsible for managing over 70% of bets on Kambi's network, across all football and tennis markets.
According to Lamb, the transformation signifies a shift from machine-assisted trading to a model where human traders assist AI, allowing them to focus more on product development and testing instead of conventional market pricing.
He elaborated, “Up to this point, the creation of sportsbook products relied heavily on a trading department’s capacity to price and manage risks for specific offers. AI trading alleviates those limitations and enables human expertise to be utilized more effectively."
The 2026 World Cup illustrated why Kambi believes such comprehensive AI integration is essential. Bettors now seek personalized wagering options that extend beyond simple match outcomes. The number of Bet Builder options during the World Cup doubled compared to 2022, with in-play bets experiencing a remarkable sevenfold increase. These bets comprised 22% of all live bets, a substantial rise from just 3% four years prior.
Player proposition bets were included in 65% of Bet Builders, up from 25% in 2022. Meanwhile, bets on player shots on target became the second-largest pre-match offering by turnover, alongside popular selections for individual player scores or assists.
“Customers demand personalized experiences, extensive player proposition markets, and the ability to create highly customized wagers in real-time,” Lamb stated, adding that traditional manual trading is no longer feasible to meet these demands at scale.
AI also streamlined the processing of in-play bets, enabling Kambi to improve its live delay technology, which can offer customizable delays for individual bets. This innovation allowed for a 40% reduction in live betting delays from August 2025 to July 2026 across both the Premier League and the World Cup.
This led to increased choices and shorter wait times for customers, benefiting operators through potential gains in customer retention and profitability.
Throughout the World Cup, Kambi also wanted to verify its performance against competitors in terms of operational metrics. Independent assessments by Bettormetrics indicated that Kambi's partners excelled or shared the lead across various key performance indicators, including market readiness, system uptime, and bet delay, outperforming various B2C and B2B competitors.
“All the testing in the world cannot tell you exactly how you stand against the rest of the market in critical product aspects,” Lamb remarked, indicating his satisfaction with Kambi's strong performance.
A striking trend showed that only 37% of pre-match turnover came from traditional match-winner bets, down from 43% in 2022, underscoring the importance of offering a wide array of betting options.
In the wake of the World Cup, Kambi is focusing on expanding its offerings, including more shots-on-target alternatives and additional automated opportunities for in-play betting as matches progress.
“Providing bettors with diverse ways to personalize their wagers around significant players and moments was a key takeaway from the tournament, guiding Kambi’s continued development of advanced sports betting products,” Lamb explained.
Now, Kambi is set to introduce AI trading across other sports such as basketball, ice hockey, and American football. The long-term goal is to create an on-demand sportsbook capable of delivering the right bet to the right customer at the right moment. Lamb believes that Kambi’s extensive network of over 70 partners, with annual liquidity exceeding €17 billion and billions of bets, gives it a significant edge in achieving this ambition.
"The term AI is ubiquitous in technology discussions, and in the betting and gaming sector, its effects are increasingly visible," Lamb emphasized. "The challenge lies in maximizing AI's potential through the right systems and automation to achieve desired outcomes."
For Kambi, integrating data with the expertise of seasoned traders is crucial to successfully direct technology, assess outputs, and identify future value additions.
“You can find many companies in this industry touting the advantages of AI,” he added. “Realizing those benefits requires a combination of comprehensive data and human expertise that not everyone possesses, and there are no shortcuts to acquiring that expertise."
The World Cup not only validated Kambi’s AI capabilities under considerable pressure but also set the stage for creating increasingly tailored experiences for their partners and customers moving forward.
