Norsk Tipping and Sportradar report record World Cup betting activity
Norway's state-owned operator says it tripled Euro 2024 revenue and logged peaks of 172 bets a second as the national team returned to the World Cup after 28 years, Sportradar's platform partner told SBC News.
Norsk Tipping has described this year's World Cup as its biggest tournament on record, crediting a lengthy internal preparation process and a close working relationship with technology partner Sportradar for handling the surge in betting activity around Norway's return to the finals after a 28-year absence.
Hans Erland Ringsvold, Head of Sports, Casino and Poker at Norsk Tipping, told SBC News that the state-owned operator began planning for the tournament during the winter, drawing on lessons from the national team's qualifying form and the European run of Bodø/Glimt to gauge likely customer demand and system load.
The operator set up a dedicated task force spanning sports operations, customer support, payments, identity verification, responsible gambling and technology teams, according to Ringsvold. The group carried out stress testing, removed system bottlenecks and ran scenario exercises simulating a failure to meet demand, with the stated aim of preparing the board for sharp swings in return-to-player rates once the tournament began.
Norsk Tipping tripled its revenue and doubled its customer numbers compared with Euro 2024, which it had previously treated as its record championship, Ringsvold said. Interest peaked around Norway's quarter-final against England, before falling away sharply once the team was eliminated and then recovering for the final.
The traditional 1X2 match-result market remained the largest category by volume but its share has fallen at each successive tournament, Ringsvold said. Player props, pre-built bet combinations, totals, both-teams-to-score and correct-score markets all grew, a trend he linked partly to the presence of Erling Haaland in the Norway squad.
Jens Nielsen, Principal Advisor for Platform and Partnerships at Sportradar, said the supplier had anticipated heavy demand given the scale of interest in Norway's campaign, including the team's wins home and away against Italy during qualifying and the profile of players such as Haaland and Martin Ødegaard.
Sportradar said roughly 20% of Norway's adult population placed a World Cup bet with Norsk Tipping during the tournament, with traffic peaking at 172 bets per second. The supplier said it safeguarded capacity in advance to maintain full uptime across the sportsbook platform throughout the competition.
Nielsen said the number of active Norsk Tipping clients rose by 273% compared with the 2022 World Cup, figures he attributed to the combination of customer-facing service and technical reliability the two organisations delivered together over the tournament.