Kambi completed its first World Cup traded entirely by AI as Spain won the tournament at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey in July. Across 104 matches and more than 100 million bets, the system handled data ingestion, pricing, offer creation, liability management and settlement.
The platform recorded zero downtime, generated an 18% operator trading margin and processed more than one million unique bet combinations during the final. Spain’s campaign lasted eight matches as the country won the trophy for a second time.
From machine assisted to machine led trading
Kambi began investing in AI trading technology in 2021, deployed it at scale during Qatar 2022 and fully embedded it in its trading operations by 2024. Before the 2026 tournament, the technology had been tested across competitions including the Premier League and Champions League. AI now trades more than 70% of bets across Kambi’s network, including all football and tennis.
“What we have undertaken is a shift from machine-assisted human trading to human-assisted machine trading,” said Oliver Lamb, SVP of trading at Kambi.
The change allows traders to focus less on pricing established markets and more on developing and testing products. Lamb said AI “lifts” the limits on sportsbook product creation while allowing existing human expertise to be used more effectively.
More personalised betting at scale
The tournament highlighted the demand for player and in-play betting. Bet Builder bets doubled compared with 2022, while seven times as many live Bet Builders were placed. They represented 22% of all live bets, up from 3% four years earlier.
Player propositions appeared in 65% of Bet Builders, compared with 25% in 2022. Player shots on target became Kambi’s second-largest pre-match betting offer by turnover, while player-to-score and player-to-assist selections were also popular.
“Meeting these modern expectations through manual trading is no longer realistic at scale,” Lamb said.
Kambi’s dynamic live delay technology sets bespoke delays at individual bet level. Across the Premier League and World Cup, live betting delay fell by more than 40% between August 2025 and July 2026. The reported customer impact was more choice, shorter suspension periods and faster bet acceptance.
Independent analysis by Bettormetrics found that Kambi partners either led or shared the lead for time to market, live uptime and bet delay. Kambi also outperformed its B2C and B2B competitors for live uptime in World Cup markets including total-goals over/unders.
Expanding beyond the tournament
Bets outside match-winner markets accounted for 63% of pre-match turnover, up from 57% in 2022. Kambi is now working on more pre-match shots-on-target options and additional automated in-play intervals.
AI trading is also being rolled out across basketball, ice hockey and American football. Kambi’s longer-term ambition is an on-demand sportsbook offering the right bet to the right customer at the right time, supported by more than 70 partners, over €17 billion in annual liquidity and billions of bets each year.
