The 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico left an eternal epic scene late at night on July 19 in Eastern Daylight Time. With Spain's substitute hero Ferran Torres scoring a decisive goal in the 106th minute, Argentina, playing with ten men, ultimately lost 0-1. Spain lifted the World Cup trophy again after 16 years, becoming the new world number one!
However, behind this quadrennial football carnival, another "cult of celebrity" belonging to tech giants has also reached its final reckoning. From the championship probabilities predicted by various AI models before the tournament began to the accurate score predictions for each knockout match, artificial intelligence has quietly taken over the "unpredictable" sport of football.
Human experts' predictions shattered, while the performances of various AIs were vastly different. Which AI peaked as the "digital Paul the Octopus" on closing night? If you stubbornly followed the AI's betting suggestions, would you now be lying on a beach in the Maldives counting your money, or would you not even have a spot on the rooftop?
Championship Showdown: Who is the True "King of Predictions" and Who is Barefoot?
Before the World Cup and on the eve of the final, several top AI models and supercomputers provided completely different scripts early on. We selected the four most popular main models across the internet for a review:
1. God Group: Gemini & Opta Supercomputer
- Pre-match prediction: Before the start of the tournament, Google's Gemini rejected the then-favored defending champion Argentina and the star-studded England and directly named Spain as the biggest favorite to win. Its confidence came from the data model of the well-known football data agency Opta—Opta granted the "Bullfighter Legion" the highest win probability of 16.08% in simulations.
- Final prediction: Before the final kicked off, Opta conducted as many as 25,000 deep data simulations using a supercomputer and concluded that Spain's chance of winning was as high as 56.31%, while Argentina's was 43.69%.
- Performance assessment: A perfect score masterpiece! Spain defeated top ten teams—Portugal, Belgium, France, and Argentina—in the entire tournament, fully corroborating AI's high evaluation of their "tactical cohesion and ball control dominance."
2. Flop Group: ChatGPT & Microsoft CoPilot
- Pre-match prediction: Representing the strongest LLM on the planet, Microsoft's CoPilot and OpenAI's ChatGPT unanimously placed heavy bets on the French team before the match. ChatGPT even insisted that, with Kylian Mbappé at the peak of his form and the extremely powerful depth of the French squad, they were the only winners of the North American summer.
- Performance assessment: Slapped in the face! Although Mbappé won the Golden Boot of the tournament with an incredible 10 goals, the French team was swept 0-2 by Spain in the semifinals and lost the third-place match to England with a crazy score of 4-6, ultimately finishing fourth. ChatGPT and CoPilot were completely defeated in strategic direction.
3. Precision Guided Group: ScoreGPT Alliance
- Prediction performance: Focusing on football match predictions, the multi-model aggregation app ScoreGPT tracked all 104 matches in this tournament. On the eve of the final, among the five large language models aggregated by this system, as many as four achieved a rare ultimate consensus—directly predicting that the final score would be a draw after regular time, with Spain winning 1-0!
- Performance assessment: With the goal being scored in the 106th minute, this precise "1-0 winning prediction" made ScoreGPT explode in popularity.
Fun Ledger: How Many Luxury Villas Can You Trade for Following AI's "All-In"?
If we had absolutely trusted AI and placed real bets on the first day of the World Cup, what would the outcome have been? Based on real betting odds and AI predictions, let's calculate an interesting ledger:
Account One: Pre-match "Lone Wolf" Betting on Spain to Win
Before the tournament began, most external attention was drawn to Messi's "last dance" or England's super squad, and Spain's championship odds were momentarily maintained at a high level of 1 to 7.5.
- Following ChatGPT/CoPilot's advice: Bet on the French team, suffered a complete loss with the principal amount going to zero.
- Following Gemini/Opta's advice: If you had invested $10,000 on Spain to win, at the moment the final whistle blew on July 19, your account would turn directly into $75,000. After deducting your principal, you would have made a net gain of $65,000 (approximately 470,000 yuan)!
Account Two: Following ScoreGPT Through the Knockout Stage
If we didn't make long-term bets but only followed the knockout stage, ScoreGPT's final win rate in this World Cup was locked in at around 57.2% (59 out of 103 matches correct).
Seemingly just above passing? But this was a World Cup full of surprises! If we used the position management method (with a fixed bet of 1,000 per match, averaging odds calculated at 1.85):
- Winning 59 out of 104 matches, the total return would be: $59 × 1000 × 1.85 = 109,150 yuan.
- Total investment of principal: $103 × 1000 = 103,000 yuan.
- Final result: You could still achieve steady positive profit. Compared to regular fans who bet on Germany and Brazil, ending up bankrupt when they got eliminated early, AI used cold, hard mathematical models to successfully help rational gamblers avoid walking the tightrope.
AI's Ambition Goes Beyond Predicting the World Cup
The flames of the World Cup have extinguished, but this tournament has revealed an irreversible trend: In the face of vast underlying data and precise algorithms, human sentiment and intuition are comprehensively falling behind. AI models with powerful underlying logic can now convert complex factors like wind speed, grass moisture, referee decision styles, and even players' real-time injuries into accurate win-loss probabilities.
Since AI can calculate so accurately even in a sport filled with the variables of 22 players, misjudgments, and upsets, how terrifying must its dominance be in global finance and cryptocurrency markets, where data is more transparent and rules are more quantifiable?
If you are amazed by AI's prophetic insights during the World Cup, consider integrating this productivity tool into your wealth strategy. The globally leading digital asset trading platform OKX has fully launched its AI strategy trading system!
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