World Cup question saw Who Wants To Be A Millionaire contestant seal life-changing amount of money

A contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire pocketed a life-changing sum after correctly answering a tricky World Cup question.

Difficult sport trivia is a feature of the ITV show and in a recent episode, Jeremy Clarkson asked the contestant to name the continent which has hosted the most World Cups in history.

Africa, South America, Europe and Asia were all listed as potential answers in the multi-choice question and there was immediate worry on the face of the contestant.

However, he was quietly confident that Europe had staged the most World Cup tournaments since it began in 1930.

He explained: "I'm pretty sure it's Europe but I just need to work it out. Africa, it's only been in once - South Africa in 2010 - Asia I think it's been once in Japan and South Korea.

"South America, it's been in Mexico twice but Mexico doesn't count in South America I don't think. It's been in Brazil in the most recent one.

"But Europe's in it multiple times. It's definitely Europe. Final answer."

After a brief delay, Clarkson confirmed he had answered correctly and won £64,000.

Europe has been the World Cup host on 11 occasions and 2030 will see the number rise to 12, with Spain and Portugal joining co-hosts Morocco.

READ MORE: FIFA calls for mid-World Cup rule change just days before knockout games

The contestant's World Cup knowledge proved to be near-encyclopedic and it saw him bag a huge amount as a result.

However, that wasn't the case for another previous contestant as he lost a whopping £100,000 from another World Cup question.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire contestant missed out on huge sum after World Cup disaster

On an edition of the show in Germany, four-time World Cup winners, Marc Offenbacher was going well and correctly answered 12 of the 15 questions.

With two out of four lifelines remaining, he was then asked, What is the most common final score in men’s FIFA World Cup finals? 1–0? 2–1? 3–1? Or 4–2?”.

But while that question would have been right up the street of many, it did not align with Offenbacher's interests as he revealed: "I never watch football. Not even other sports.”

In Germany, one of the available lifelines involves the audience being asked if anyone who knows the answer - to which they must stand up if they believe they do.

Eventually an audience member decided to assist and a consultation saw 4-2 completely ruled out as a possibility.

However, when Offenbacher used his 50:50 lifeline, it was between 4-2 and 2-1 as the answers.

2-1 was the scoreline which the audience member believed to be most likely and Offenbacher went for it.

But disaster struck as it was in fact 4-2 which was the most common result in World Cup finals. It happened on four occasions, including England's historic 1966 triumph and France's victory over Croatia in Russia in 2018.

The question was for £108,000 but because Offenbacher didn't have a safety net, he ended up with just €500 (£435) - a significantly smaller sum of money.