Yahoo Finance How Lloyd's of London predicted France win
Mystic pigs, brown bears and oracle otters all had a go, with various degrees of success, at predicting the winners of the World Cup. As did investment banks such as Goldman Sachs which apparently used artificial intelligence to predict – at one stage – that Brazil would beat England in the final to win the trophy.
But after France beat Croatia in Sunday’s final, the Lloyd’s of London insurance market is able to claim that it has correctly predicted the winner for the second time running.
The research by Lloyd’s with the Centre for Economics and Business Research was based on the value of insuring players in the World Cup teams. The CEBR estimated players’ earnings until retirement based on wages, endorsements and other factors to produce assessments on the cost of insuring them based on their age, position and nationality.
On this basis France came top with a collective value of £1.4bn, England second at £1.17bn and Brazil third at £1.1bn.
The researchers found that average insurable value of one player on the England team – which lost to Croatia in the semi-finals – was more than the entire Panama squad (£17.7m in total). They found that forwards are the most valuable players, with their legs worth £19.2m on average.
The methodology worked for 2014 too when Germany was predicted to win. “Having correctly predicted Germany to win four years, we always knew the pressure would be on again,” said Victoria de’Ath of Lloyd’s. The pressure will be on again for 2022.
