$50 Billion in Bets! Is the World Cup “Curse” Real?

The World Cup kicks off on June 11, and every time it comes around, someone digs up that old “curse” chart: over the past eight World Cups, the Nasdaq fell during five of them, with an average return of -1.2%.

The measurement window is from the close before the opening match to the close of the first trading day after the final $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$

- 1994, United States: -1.7%

- 1998, France: +9.2%

- 2002, Korea/Japan: -13.1%

- 2006, Germany: -1.3%

- 2010, South Africa: -0.9%

- 2014, Brazil: +2.5%

- 2018, Russia: +1.4%

- 2022, Qatar: -5.4%

So it’s 5 down, 3 up. More red than green. But once you look at the backdrop, the story is obvious: 2002 was still dealing with the aftermath of the dot-com bust, 2022 was hit by the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes, and that +9.2% in 1998 was simply the tech bull market doing its thing. The matches go on, but the market trades on its own logic. The World Cup is background noise, not the engine.

So what does the World Cup actually affect? Not direction, but liquidity.

Two ECB economists, Ehrmann and Jansen, looked at data from 2010 and 2014 and found that once the matches start, trading volume drops immediately. When the home team is playing, volume can fall by nearly half. In the U.S. market, it dropped by 43%, and each goal scored shaved off another 5%. During the 2014 knockout stage, S&P trading volume was more than 18% lower than the year before.

Traders are fans too. Once the ball starts rolling, who’s still staring at the screen? So the market doesn’t necessarily fall, it just gets thinner and quieter. And this year there’s an extra twist: previous tournaments like Qatar and Korea/Japan were played at odd hours for U.S. viewers, often late at night. This time, with the tournament in North America, the biggest matches will land right in U.S. trading hours, making distraction potentially worse than it’s been in years.

2026 World Cup: one of the biggest sports betting events in history, with total global wagers to reach around $50 billion!

The 2026 tournament will be co-hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, with 48 teams and 104 matches running from June 11 to July 19. It will be the largest World Cup ever, opening in Mexico City and ending with the final in New Jersey, with an expected 6 million fans attending.

Lodging:$Airbnb, Inc.(ABNB)$ & $Booking Holdings(BKNG)$

Oxford Economics estimates host-city hotels could bring in about $900 million in additional revenue, with room rates on match days rising 7% to 25%. Sounds meaningful, but spread across total annual U.S. hotel revenue, it adds only about 0.4%, which is barely noticeable at the company earnings level. Even worse, pre-tournament surveys show that in about 80% of host cities, hotel bookings are still below expectations due to visa hassles, expensive tickets, and high travel costs. Some hotels are even saying this tournament “doesn’t feel like much.” If you want exposure, hotels are cleaner than airlines, which still have to deal with fuel prices and capacity constraints.

Sports betting: $DraftKings Inc.(DKNG)$, $Flutter Entertainment PLC(FLUT)$, $Sportradar Group AG(SRAD)$, $Genius Sports Ltd(GENI)$

This is the most leveraged theme by far. The 2026 World Cup could become the biggest sports betting event ever, with global betting volume potentially reaching $50 billion. With the U.S. hosting, and the event landing in June and July, usually a slow season for sportsbooks, it should be a rare customer-acquisition opportunity. Some analysts think the buzz could even outshine the Super Bowl.

But there’s a catch. DraftKings just cut its 2026 revenue guidance below expectations, and the stock fell about 15% after hours. The bigger threat may be prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi. In the U.S. alone, prediction-market volume on this tournament is expected to exceed $2.3 billion, and a single Polymarket winner contract has already traded around $1.6 billion.

Do you believe in the World Cup “curse”?

Is there really some kind of market superstition here, or does macro drive everything while football is just the backdrop?

Who’s your biggest winner?

Leave your comments to win tiger coins~