(Bloomberg) — A single trader on Polymarket lost nearly $1 million when Cabo Verde fought Spain to a stunning draw on Monday in one of the most unlikely outcomes in recent World Cup history, powered by a 40-year-old goalkeeper who left the pitch in tears.<\/p>\n
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The losing bettor had wagered on what oddsmakers saw as a nearly certain Spanish win, according to trading records from Polymarket, one of the largest prediction market exchanges.<\/p>\n
Spain, the most recent European champion, was widely considered to be the favorite to win this year\u2019s World Cup, with a Goldman Sachs model giving them a 26% chance to prevail. Cabo Verde, on the other hand, has never played in the tournament before and has no high-profile professional players on its roster.<\/p>\n
The outcome was by far the most unexpected result in the first few days of a tournament that has already seen a number of surprising draws, including Japan\u2019s late comeback on Sunday to tie with the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
Behind the unlikely triumph was Josimar Jos\u00e9 \u00c9vora Dias, or Vozinha as he is known, the goalie who made seven decisive saves in the match.<\/p>\n
Vozinha said visa issues \u2014 in particular a new requirement that visitors from certain countries, including Cabo Verde, post a refundable bond of up to $15,000 \u2014 prevented his mother from attending his historic World Cup debut. He won player of the match and described the game as the moment he had been working toward his \u201centire life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Exchanges like Polymarket have emerged from obscurity over the last few years to become popular places to bet on the global tournament and many other sports, after previously being marketed primarily as a way to wager on geopolitics and economic events.<\/p>\n
Explainer: How Prediction Markets Turned the World Into a Casino<\/p>\n
Customers use cryptocurrency wallets that allow them to operate under pseudonyms without revealing their real-world identities or locations. The company has been criticized by lawmakers for not collecting the same background information as brokerages and other betting companies.<\/p>\n
Prediction market exchanges have also opened a window into the kinds of substantial \u2014 and sometimes very risky \u2014 bets that people are placing on the tournament. Polymarket users made a total of $64 million in trades on Monday\u2019s game with Spain.<\/p>\n
The platform\u2019s public trading records show that Spain\u2019s odds of winning stood at an average of around 92% when the user \u2014 who went by the screen name \u201cbetoor619\u201d \u2014 placed the massive unsuccessful wager. Records indicate the user opened the account last October, and had never won or lost more than $9,000 on an individual event before the Cabo Verde game.<\/p>\n
Some traders place big bets on highly-likely outcomes in the hopes of capturing small profits on relatively low-risk bets. If Spain had won, betoor619 would have only made around $85,000 on an original bet of almost $1.1 million.<\/p>\n
Other traders made similarly large bets on Spain winning, but most of them also executed other sizable trades that appear to have offset at least some of the losses.<\/p>\n
Prediction markets allow large traders to serve as so-called market makers, taking both sides of a single bet in the same way that Wall Street firms buy and sell the same stock to capture small differences in prices.<\/p>\n
France is currently favored to win the tournament on Polymarket, with traders assigning it an 18% chance, followed by Spain at 15%. Unlike traditional sports books, where the provider typically sets the odds, prediction-market probabilities are based on traders\u2019 buying and selling activity. Polymarket betting on the World Cup winner has seen about $2.4 billion of volume so far.<\/p>\n
–With assistance from Emily Nicolle, Felipe Marques and Carolyn Silverman.<\/p>\n
(Updates with data on World Cup bets in final paragraph.)<\/p>\n
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