World Cup bettors are losing millions on Polymarket’s “safe” favorites

Spain controlled the ball for nearly 75% of the match and took 27 shots at Cape Verde’s goal on June 14, a stat line that usually ends in a win.

Cape Verde’s 40-year-old goalkeeper, Vozinha, walked away with player-of-the-match honors after a 0-0 draw that cost Polymarket bettors millions and made one obscure wallet roughly $9 million richer in a single day.

The wallet belongs to an account called fishalive, which joined Polymarket in June 2026 and has placed exactly two recorded predictions.

The account redeemed about $4.7 million on a “Spain not to win” contract and another $8.5 million on a Cape Verde +2.5 spread, converting roughly $400,000 in stake into a profit of nearly $9 million.

Polymarket Sports reported a bet of $400,000 at 9% odds cashed out for $4,702,769.23. The size, timing, and newness of the account are drawing attention online, with some commentators noting that a $4.5 million position was landed just eight minutes before kickoff.

A brand-new wallet read Cape Verde’s chances better than the market did, and Polymarket’s public ledger let everyone watch the payout land in real time.

Polymarket’s World Cup Winner market alone has logged $2.46 billion in volume, with France leading the outright field at roughly 17.6%, Spain next at around 13.9%, and Portugal and England trailing close behind at roughly 10.8% and 10.5%, respectively.

The contract resolves around July 20, and Polymarket says its broader 2026 World Cup lineup spans 362 active markets pulling in over $2.5 billion combined.

That scale turns individual matches into standalone financial events, and the Spain game produced about $64 million in trading on its own.

Favorites keep losing

A trader identified as betoor619 backed Spain to win at roughly 92% implied odds, risking close to $1 million for a potential gain of only about $85,000, and the draw erased the position entirely.

Polymarket Sports had captured the setup days earlier when a separate user placed $1 million on Spain to beat Cape Verde, resulting in a payout of $1,085,943.48. Cape Verde held its line through stoppage time and grabbed the first World Cup point in its history, draining both positions at once.

The pattern repeated within 24 hours, as Inc. reported that a trader called FlickRaw lost about $4.2 million across a $2.7 million bet on the Netherlands to beat Japan, then $1.5 million on Belgium to beat Egypt.

Japan equalized twice, including an 88th-minute goal that finished the match 2-2. Belgium conceded in the 19th minute to Egypt and settled for a 1-1 draw despite leveling the score in the 66th minute.

The same Belgium result wiped out the tournament’s largest single bet so far: a trader called leeeroyjenkins staked $8.6 million on Belgium, a position that would have paid roughly $13.1 million had Belgium won.

Polymarket Sports tracked the match in real time, posting Egypt’s 1-0 halftime lead before confirming the final draw that erased the wager.

Why now

Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium were the stronger sides on paper, a read the betting markets shared. Win-only positions pay out for one outcome alone, and soccer’s draw rate turns a dominant performance into a worthless ticket the moment the final whistle confirms a tied score.

A 92-cent “Yes” share prices in near-certainty, then collapses to zero the instant the team it tracks fails to score one more goal than its opponent. fishalive’s two positions worked because a “Spain not to win” contract and a Cape Verde spread both paid out on a tie, the exact outcome that erased every favorite bet placed that week.

The winner board functions as a sentiment gauge, tracking how the crowd reranks national teams as results come in. Match-level contracts function as the viral engine because they resolve in roughly 90 minutes, generate visible profit-and-loss screenshots, and immediately punish bad sizing.

Whales have concentrated their biggest bets on favorites to win outright matches, while the largest asymmetric payouts have come from spreads and “not to win” contracts that explicitly price in draw risk.

Goldman Sachs’ pre-tournament model had given Spain a 26% chance of winning the tournament, ahead of France at 19%. Polymarket’s crowd has since repriced France ahead of Spain, a move that followed directly from the Cape Verde result.

The World Cup offers a global audience already fluent in football outcomes, a compressed group-stage schedule that produces a match-driven news cycle every few hours, national-team stakes that carry emotional weight independent of money, and a settlement structure that turns every big bet into a traceable, screenshot-ready story.

These are nearly all the ingredients that make a prediction market spread beyond crypto circles.

Two outcomes ahead

World Cup volume continues to compound as the knockout rounds approach, and the combination of public wallets, live repricing, and emotionally charged national outcomes makes Polymarket a fixture of sports media coverage.

The Cape Verde trade and the Belgium wipeouts become the first entries in a tournament that produces a new viral wallet story every few days, with match markets establishing themselves as a faster, more visceral complement to traditional sportsbooks.

A pullback scenario consists of whales who got burned on thin-upside favorite bets, like the Spain position that risked $1 million for $85,000 in return, scaling back oversized win-only wagers, and liquidity migrates toward spreads and hedges that already price in draw risk.

Regulatory friction adds to the pullback, given that the CFTC’s June 10 draft rules aim to formalize federal oversight of prediction markets while acknowledging that sports contracts can aid price discovery.

Yet states, tribes, and gaming interests are fighting the move, and the American Gaming Association points to survey data showing 85% of Americans view these contracts as gambling.

Spain itself briefly blocked Polymarket and Kalshi in late May over licensing gaps, which turns the story away from raw market growth and toward a fight over whether anonymous wallets and sportsbook-sized bets belong in the same regulatory category as financial derivatives.

Whether fishalive is sharp, lucky, or simply early to a structural mispricing in win-only contracts is still an open question, and Polymarket’s ledger won’t settle it alone.

What the ledger does show, match after match, is a direct flow of money from bettors who priced in certainty to the ones who priced in soccer.

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