The Think Tank

We run the data to see how profitable backing favourites in the group stage actually is ...

Germans, already on the brink of elimination, frantically pressed for a goal.

Their defeat to 13-2 Mexico earlier in the campaign also ranks in the top five group-stage shocks of the last three World Cups, while in 2014 another defending champion, Spain, also suffered high-profile reverses to Chile (5-1) and the Netherlands (9-2).

Costa Rica – more on them later – upset Uruguay and Italy in 2014, so there are rewards to be had if you are able to identify the overvalued pre-tournament hotpot or undervalued outsider and ride with them throughout the group stage.

If we separate the data by the match price of the underdog we can observe that it hasn’t just been a case of a couple of extreme results skewing the profit & loss figures.

The median price for group-stage outsiders is a shade over 4-1, and if we split the data in half along that priceline we see that both groups show a handy profit, with the juicer returns actually coming from underdogs who were 4-1 or shorter (+18.58).

There is no guarantee that underdogs will continue to have their day in Qatar, but the most recent evidence points to at least a few surprises along the way.

The median price of favourites in the last three group stages has been 17-20. If we split the favourites down the middle into two groups then favourites quoted at shorter than 17-20 made a loss of -2.88 and those priced 17-20 or bigger would have returned a level-stakes loss of -5.22.

If there has been a sweetspot for favourite-backers then teams who went off between 1-2 and even-money have turned a profit, with odds-against favourites the worst performing sub-group.

One area where the 2022 World Cup looks likely to differ from the three previous editions is the sheer quantity of odds-on shots in the first round of matches. Thirteen of the 16 opening-round fixtures feature an odds-on shot (81 per cent), something that was only the case in eight matches in 2010 and 2014 (50 per cent). There are also more very short favourites this time around, with eight teams 4-9 or shorter to win their first group game.

Six of the groups open with the section favourite playing the rank outsider and there is only one instance of the two most fancied teams facing off early – something that happened four times in 2014 and three times in 2018 – which is a bit of a shame in terms of the early jeopardy and pressure those clashes can create.