Kambi Q2 2026: AI Traded Every World Cup Bet, And the Numbers Back It Up

Key Points

• The company’s revenue increased by 13.5% year-over-year to €45.9m in Q2 2026, with adjusted EBITA more than doubling to €7.6m at a 16.5% margin, thanks mainly to excellent performance of the AI-traded World Cup.
• The 2026 FIFA World Cup was the first major football tournament compiled and priced with the help of Kambi’s in-house AI, processing over 100 million bets and €1bn in Turnkey Sportsbook stakes at an 18% operator trading margin.
• Adjusted EBITA forecast for the full year 2026 was increased from €20m to €25m to €23m to €27m. The number of employees is less than 1,000 and continues declining, according to Kambi’s CFO David Kenyon.

One Hundred Million Bets, Zero Manual Traders

A hundred million bets is not an abstract figure. Someone has to price every one of them, manage the liability behind it, and settle it after the final whistle. At previous World Cups, that was mostly a job for human trading desks. At the 2026 edition, Kambi did it with machines.

The listed supplier of sportsbook technology recorded €45.9 million of income during the second quarter, which was an increase of 13.5 percent over the €40.5 million recorded in the same quarter in 2025. The adjusted EBITA increased by more than double to €7.6 million from €3.7 million, and the margin stood at 16.5%.

CEO Werner Becher framed the numbers plainly on the earnings call: “Q2 and the weeks following have been a fantastic business period for Kambi, as our report shows this morning.” He told analysts the company had “now turned a corner and returned to growth,” a claim backed by the full-half picture. For H1 2026, revenue rose 9.1% to €89.4m, with adjusted EBITA up 83% to €13.3m.

The headline, though, is not the revenue number. It is what sat underneath it.

What ‘Fully AI-Traded’ Actually Means?

Kambi’s AI trading system did not place bets. What it did was perform every function that a human trading desk would ordinarily handle: compiling odds before kick-off, adjusting prices in real time as matches developed, controlling market availability, managing liability exposure across the network, and settling markets once results were confirmed. All 104 games. All 78 that fell within Q2. Without needing to hire additional staff.

Becher put it directly during the earnings call: “Our AI trading system priced and traded all 104 games pre-match and live, delivering a product of high quality without the need to increase the number of human traders, as we noted other companies had.”

The scale of what that required became clearest during the final. More than a million unique combinations of bets were observed in that game alone by Kambi, according to Becher who mentioned the number of unique combinations as opposed to individual bets on that occasion. More than 700,000 unique combinations of bets per game were available during the semi-finals stage.

Becher also flagged what this means for competitors still relying on human traders. Domestic football leagues return soon, he noted, and those businesses will need to scale back down to a lighter offering. Kambi, now trading all football through AI, will not.

How the Americas Rewrote the Geography of World Cup Betting?

European kick-off times were not kind to European sportsbooks. A significant portion of the 2026 World Cup group-stage schedule landed at hours that pushed European bettors to the margins. For Kambi, that did not matter. Its Americas partner base filled the gap.

The partners of Kambi in North and South America accounted for 57% of global World Cup revenue compared to 38% in the 2022 version of the World Cup held in Qatar. Latin America played an active part mainly because of favourable time zones during the first few games.

The overall turnover picture was strong. Across the full tournament, Kambi processed more than €1bn in Turnkey Sportsbook stakes and recorded an operator trading margin of 18%. Average turnover per match rose roughly 20% from 2022, a meaningful step given the expanded 48-team format already meant more matches available to bet on.

The product mix shifted as well. Live Bet Builder comprised 22% of all live bets made during the tournament, compared to just 3% at the World Cup last year. The pre-match Bet Builder turnover increased by 3.6 times relative to Qatar. Player shots on target became the top pre-match Bet Builder market, delivering twice the turnover that match-winners did.

BettorMetrics independently confirmed the effectiveness of the platform during the tournament, with Kambi among the top performers in live betting markets.

The April Problem That Stayed in the Accounts

Not every line in Kambi’s Q2 report was clean. April brought a technical downtime incident that cut into results by a low single-digit million-euro amount. What made Kambi’s handling of it notable was CFO David Kenyon’s decision not to exclude it from adjusted EBITA.

Kenyon explained the reasoning on the earnings call: “We didn’t think you should look at that as completely exceptional. Of course, it hasn’t happened to that extent to us very often, but it’s part of the business. Things can go wrong, and just because it doesn’t happen very often to us doesn’t mean we wanted to exclude it to inflate our profits.”

The approach is worth noting. Many companies quietly exclude operational incidents under “items affecting comparability.” Kambi absorbed the cost and left it in the numbers. Investors appear to have taken that as a signal of straightforward reporting, not a reason to sell.

Guidance Raised, Headcount Falling

The company’s forecast for full-year adjusted EBITA has been raised from €20m-€25m to €23m-€27m. The revision has been due to the outperformance of the World Cup and is part of a trend of improved operating leverage that began back in Q1 2026, where revenue grew by 4.9% and operating profit amounted to €4.2m from €800,000.

CFO Kenyon told analysts that World Cup revenue would continue billing into July and August, giving Q3 an early lift before domestic leagues take over as the main driver. He also confirmed that headcount, now below 1,000, is expected to keep falling as the AI transition advances.

Becher has stated that 90% of turnover will eventually run through Kambi’s proprietary AI system. Basketball, baseball and ice hockey are next in the pipeline. Tennis is already, in Becher’s words, “effectively fully onboarded,” with both Wimbledon and the French Open traded using AI this year.

Kambi’s shares rose approximately 10% in the period following the Q2 results announcement.

Prediction Markets: A Door Left Deliberately Ajar

One persistent question hanging over Kambi is whether it will enter the prediction market space. The company has avoided committing either way, and that position did not shift materially after Q2.

Analysts on the earnings call pointed to estimates suggesting prediction markets captured close to 30% of US sports betting volume during the World Cup. Becher contextualised that figure sharply: “30% of the US population is living in Texas and California, where sports betting is not regulated yet. I think you have your answer where they made their 30%.”

On whether Kambi would eventually participate, Becher said the company is not standing idle: “We are in a wait-and-see position. I would say even more than that. We, of course, in the background, are evaluating options, partnerships, developing it in-house, on our own as well. We are prepared for this being eventually legal in the future in the U.S. As it stands now, being licensed in 70-plus jurisdictions, we can’t start acting on prediction markets. But if this product is considered to be fully legal and licensed, particularly in the U.S., we’ll be able to serve our partners.”

Court decisions in the US remain the trigger. During the World Cup, prediction markets reached a $44.8bn monthly trading record in June. Kambi is watching. It is not moving yet.

Commercial Expansion Continues Across Canada and the Americas

Beyond the AI story, Kambi spent Q2 adding commercial ground in North America. The company was selected by the Atlantic Lottery Corporation and British Columbia Lottery Corporation to power a new multi-province Canadian sportsbook covering seven provinces. It also partnered with Pure Casino Entertainment ahead of Alberta’s regulated iGaming market launch on 13 July, and extended Turnkey Sportsbook partnerships with BetWarrior and Desert Diamond Casinos. A multi-year Odds Feed+ agreement was signed with RETABET Group for Spain and Peru.

Becher told analysts the sales pipeline looks “as good as the last few quarters, not worse, probably even a little bit better.”

Expert Analysis

Kambi’s Q2 result is not simply a good World Cup quarter. The more significant reading is what the AI deployment says about where the cost base is heading. Revenue grew 13.5%. Adjusted EBITDA more than doubled. Operating expenses went down. That is not a World Cup effect. That is the operating leverage of a business where the marginal cost of pricing more bets is falling.

The live Bet Builder jump from 3% to 22% of live bets tells a related story. Higher-complexity, higher-margin products are becoming a larger share of the mix, and Kambi’s AI is what makes it practical to offer them at scale. Competitors that still rely on human traders to manage live Bet Builder combinations will find it increasingly difficult to match that depth without adding headcount.

The headcount trajectory below 1,000 and falling, combined with expanding AI coverage into basketball, baseball and ice hockey, suggests Kambi’s cost structure will continue to improve even as the product breadth widens. The company has effectively bet its medium-term margin story on that ratio holding. Q2 suggests, so far, it is.