(Bloomberg) — A single trader on Polymarket lost nearly $1 million when Cabo Verde fought Spain to a stunning draw on Monday in one of the most unlikely outcomes in recent World Cup history, powered by a 40-year-old goalkeeper who left the pitch in tears.
The losing bettor had wagered on what oddsmakers saw as a nearly certain Spanish win, according to trading records from Polymarket, one of the largest prediction market exchanges.
Spain, the most recent European champion, was widely considered to be the favorite to win this year’s World Cup, with a Goldman Sachs model giving them a 26% chance to prevail. Cabo Verde, on the other hand, has never played in the tournament before and has no high-profile professional players on its roster.
The outcome was by far the most unexpected result in the first few days of a tournament that has already seen a number of surprising draws, including Japan’s late comeback on Sunday to tie with the Netherlands.
Behind the unlikely triumph was Josimar José Évora Dias, or Vozinha as he is known, the goalie who made seven decisive saves in the match.
Vozinha said visa issues — in particular a new requirement that visitors from certain countries, including Cabo Verde, post a refundable bond of up to $15,000 — prevented his mother from attending his historic World Cup debut. He won player of the match and described the game as the moment he had been working toward his “entire life.”
Exchanges like Polymarket have emerged from obscurity over the last few years to become popular places to bet on the global tournament and many other sports, after previously being marketed primarily as a way to wager on geopolitics and economic events.
Customers use cryptocurrency wallets that allow them to operate under pseudonyms without revealing their real-world identities or locations. The company has been criticized by lawmakers for not collecting the same background information as brokerages and other betting companies.
The exchanges have also opened a window into the kinds of substantial — and sometimes very risky — bets that people are placing on the tournament. Polymarket users made a total of $64 million of trades on Monday’s game with Spain.
The platform’s public trading records show that Spain’s odds of winning stood at an average of around 92% when the user — who went by the screen name “betoor619” — placed the massive unsuccessful wager. Records indicate the user opened the account last October, and had never won or lost more than $9,000 on an individual event before the Cabo Verde game.
Some traders place big bets on highly-likely outcomes in the hopes of capturing small profits on relatively low-risk bets. If Spain had won, betoor619 would have only made around $85,000 on an original bet of almost $1.1 million.
Other traders made similarly large bets on Spain winning, but most of them also executed other sizable trades that appear to have offset at least some of the losses.
Prediction markets allow large traders to serve as so-called market makers, taking both sides of a single bet in the same way that Wall Street firms buy and sell the same stock to capture small differences in prices.
–With assistance from Emily Nicolle, Felipe Marques and Carolyn Silverman.
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