Lloyd’s comes up trumps with World Cup predictions

Lloyd’s of London successfully predicted that Germany would win the 2014 FIFA World Cup, basing its prediction on insurable value.

In conjunction with the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr), Lloyd’s ranked each team in the tournament, based on the collective insurable value of each country’s players, to reveal Germany as the most likely to win.

Cebr used players’ wages and endorsement incomes, alongside a collection of additional indicators, to construct an economic model which estimates players’ incomes until retirement. These projections formed the basis for assessing insurable values by player age, playing position and nationality. The total collective value was estimated at £6.2 billion (€7.7 billion/$10.5 billion).

Insurable value also helped to closely predict Brazil’s fate, who finished fourth over their predicted third. However, the predictions did fall short in the final match, which according to insurable value, should have seen Germany take on Spain, rather than Argentina.

England too – based on insurable value – should have finished much higher in the rankings, with their team the third most expensive in the competition.

Further predictions from the research, which was supported by Sporting Intelligence, who provided anonymised footballer salary data for each of the 32 teams participating, indicated that Group G would be the toughest group – with a combined insurable value of £1.2 billion and Group C the easiest group – with a combined insurable value of £340 million.