With a new system in place that separated the teams that qualified for the World Cup into pots based on their FIFA World Rankings, this year’s tournament doesn’t have the dreaded “group of death” that many before it have possessed.
World Cup group odds 2018: Brazil headlines group betting favorites for the tournament
Brazil, France, and Germany are the top favorites to win their respective groups at the sportsbooks with the 2018 World Cup in Russia set to get underway in June.
Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images
Instead, most of the tournament’s top teams have pretty favorable group draws heading into the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
The biggest favorite in the Group stage is Brazil going off as a -400 favorite to win Group E at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com. Brazil is one of the strongest and deepest teams in the tournament this year as it always is, and isn’t expected to have much trouble against Switzerland (+600 to win Group E), Serbia (+800), and Costa Rica (+1800).
France is the next biggest favorite on the board paying -350 to come out on top of Group C, which consists of Denmark (+450), Peru (+900), and Australia (+1800).
Despite being a prominent team in the international football world since winning the World Cup in 1998, France has actually only won its group once in its last four World Cup appearances and has been eliminated in the group stage in two of those tournaments.
Germany is the favorite on the odds to win the World Cup at +450, and enters Russia as a -310 betting favorite to win Group F. This line has more to do with how good Germany is than how weak the group is as both Mexico (+500) and Sweden (+600) have looked good through qualifiers. South Korea rounds out the group as +2000 underdogs to win it.
Portugal had the worst luck out of any of the teams in Pot 1, drawing a Spain team into Group B that is far better than the ranking it had to land in Pot 2. Spain is the favorite to win the group at -200.
On the bright side for Portugal, even if the group will be harder to win at +185 with Spain in it, advancing over Morocco (+1600) and Iran (+2500) should not be a problem.
Rounding out the odds on the World Cup group stage are Group A (Uruguay +100, Russia +125, Egypt +550, and Saudi Arabia +3300), Group D (Argentina -180, Croatia +225, Nigeria +1000, and Iceland +1200), Group G (Belgium -125, England +120, Tunisia +1600, and Panama +2500), and Group H (Colombia +120, Poland +175, Senegal +500, and Japan +700).
For more odds information, betting picks, and a breakdown of this week’s top sports betting news check out the OddsShark podcast with Jon Campbell and Andrew Avery. Subscribe on iTunes or listen to it at OddsShark.libsyn.com.
