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Russia was one of the countries in the world where the betting and gambling practices were legalised since the closing days of the Soviet Union. In 2017, the Russian sports betting market had introduced 13 different licensed online betting platforms, namely, Betcity, BingoBoom, Liga Stavok, 1xBet, Winline, 888, Fonbet, Olympus, Baltbet, Leon, PariMatch, Marathon and Bwin.ru. The Russian betting market had tremendously grown over the years, achieving USD11.75 billion business turnover per year during July 2017. In June and July 2018, Russia would host the 21st Edition of FIFA World Cup tournament. In this context, the tournament organisers were concerned about the occurrence of illegal betting practices during such world-class event. Further, the anticipation of practising betting and gambling operations in the mega tournament might badly affect Russia's economy. In an attempt to crack down the online betting platforms and shun illicit gaming options from the market, Russia had blocked the operations of more than 1800 online gaming websites during April 2018. Moreover, the online gaming industry's practices in Russia were restricted by the utilisation of a new Virtual Private Network services in the same time period. Apart from Russia, the crack down operations on illegal betting and artificial soccer goods were carried out by the Royal Thai Police of Bangkok and the police and Customs and Excise Department of Hong Kong, respectively. In this context, would the Russian authority be able to counter the illegal betting and gambling practices in the country during the 2018 FIFA World Cup?