With some of the pre-tournament favourites out of the competition, this is turning into a very unpredictable and exciting World Cup. However, despite the long odds, Euromonitor International put their data analysis skills to the test by developing a model predicting the winner of the FIFA World Cup Trophy.
The approach had to be quick, simple and effective. Our Centre for Analytics, Modelling and Innovation team had only a week to develop it. They decided to use historic World Cup data as it is both readily available and not biased by the outcome of friendly or regional competitions.
When we looked at the model’s results against those of actual match results for the first two rounds, its accuracy rate was of 70% or two out of three games. The model did not predict Spain going out, but then again predicting the end of an era might be asking too much!
CAMI is a modelling-driven business intelligence resource combining Euromonitor’s industry knowledge with innovative methods in statistics, economics, data science and data visualisation.