$1 Million Polymarket Bet That Spain Will Win First World Cup Game Backfires Epically

Most see Spain as the out-and-out favorites to win the World Cup. So why not put a bunch of money on them to win their opening game at the tournament against puny Cabo Verde?

That’s what one genius on Polymarket did, and it backfired spectacularly. The anonymous account put nearly $1 million on Spain to come out ahead against the archipelagic nation with a population of barely 500,000 people, and stood to win $1,085,943.48, according to Polymarket’s pre-match odds.

But when the final whistle was blown, the score stood at 0-0. Cabo Verde’s heroic defending, spearheaded by an epic performance by their 40-year-old goalkeeper Vozhina, had toppled this titanic bet, as well as dampened the Spaniards’ World Cup hopes.

Few could have foreseen Spain firing a blank against the 67th ranked nation in FIFA’s official standing, having blown everyone away at the 2024 Euros — except another user, who made over $9,000,000 after betting that Spain would not win the game and putting money on a spread that Cabo Verde would keep the goal difference to within 2.5 goals.

Still, placing such a huge sum, no matter how safe the odds, speaks to a certain level of arrogance that prediction hubs like Polymarket and Kalshi have been happy to foster. They position themselves as the thinking man’s alternative to crude gambling, laundering their image through partnerships with news organizations like CNN, who display their prediction data during live broadcasts. (“I wouldn’t describe it as gambling” but a “mix of betting and options trading,” one college student whose been betting on prediction markets revealingly told The Guardian earlier this year.)

These platforms also claim you’re betting against other players instead of against the house, which everyone knows always wins. So, the pitch in a nutshell: if you monitor the situation hard enough, you can make easy money over the laggards who don’t have their ear to the ground.

But boast all the hidden insights you want, sometimes the unpredictable happens. Although maybe our unfortunate bettor should’ve just monitored the situation harder; if they looked back, they would’ve seen that Spain has only won its opening World Cup game once since 2010.

More on prediction markets: Sports Betting Scandals Are Tearing College Football Apart

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