Before the 2026 World Cup kicked off, Betclic made a more fundamental decision than signing star endorsements—they dismantled and rebuilt the entire player prop betting system. This top European operator, holding the title of the official betting partner of the French Football Federation, found that the bottleneck of the old system was not in the front-end display, but in the backend pricing and settlement chain. Chief Commercial Officer Martin Houdbine put it straightforwardly: "Our coverage of player and team props was quite limited and picky, mainly focused on high-demand markets—first goal scorer, anytime scorer, top event assists, and basic team data like corners and penalties." Pricing relied on manual compilation combined with derivative pricing models extrapolated from core football markets—this combination could work on a small scale, but hit the ceiling when it came to less popular leagues and niche props: unable to cover long-tail events, slow to market, lacking cross-market consistency, and difficult to maintain pricing accuracy.
"Fans have been thinking in terms of players for a while, and it took betting products several years to catch up"
Betclic's solution was WSF Odds—a joint venture between football data analysis company Wall Street Football and sports trading giant TradingLab, covering over 90 football events worldwide, using official data, AI pricing models, proprietary algorithms, and professional trading verification to generate dynamic player performance markets. WSF CEO and co-founder Giovanni Bertoli was incisive about the market's lag: "Football fans' way of thinking had already shifted to a player-oriented approach long before betting products caught up. They follow shots, passes, assists, penalties, and substitutions every week. Operators are aware of this, but pricing player and team props accurately—especially in real-time—is a completely different technical challenge from traditional match outcome betting. Most companies' internal teams simply can't do it without piling on a massive amount of manual trading pressure."
Betclic also invested thought into integration depth. Player props are not isolated into separate modules but are naturally embedded into the existing sports betting experience—clearly distinguishing match markets, team markets, and player markets, with the most relevant betting opportunities presented at the forefront. A dedicated live betting display interface helps users make quicker decisions during matches, while avoiding overly complex navigation or bombarding users with too many options at once. Houdbine particularly emphasized the value of official data feeds: "Player props, especially very fine-grained data like shots and passes, can quickly lead to customer dissatisfaction with small deviations, and the definition standards for props vary among providers. Using official data sources allows us to maintain consistency, transparency, reduce disputes and customer service burdens, and settle more quickly and confidently."
From "betting on outcomes" to "betting on stories": Player props are no longer just a side show
Player props now account for 20% of Betclic's total football betting volume, with anytime scorers, shots on target, and assists being the most stable product lines. Houdbine observed a behavioral shift—users are no longer just betting on who wins or loses, but are starting to bet on "stories": "Props not only increase engagement, they usually also increase the number of options per ticket." Bertoli provided a corresponding explanation from the fan's perspective: "Today's bettors are more data-savvy than they were five years ago. Fantasy football, data journalism, and performance tracking apps have reset their expectations. They come in with knowledge about specific players and performances, and prop markets respond more directly to this behavior than traditional match outcome betting."
Against the backdrop of continuous growth in the Bet Builder product, Bertoli believes that deeply and accurately priced player props will only become more popular—"A good Bet Builder can't just rely on three to five player markets. You need breadth, and you need the right prices." Product operators following the PASA official website can read a clear trend from this case: Player props are moving from the periphery to the backbone of sports betting products, and what supports this backbone is no longer Excel in the hands of manual traders, but a complete tech stack of official data + AI pricing + real-time settlement.
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leaders," a gambling industry news channel: https://t.me/pasa_news
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