FIFA world Cup forecast from London’s Lloyd’s : the more insured, the more likely to win
The equation is based on the players’ value. It foresaw Germany’s victory four years ago.
It will be France to win the FIFA World Cup in Russia. The Blues will win their second world title – having won the first one on home soil in 1998 – beating Germany in the final. The third place will either go to England or Spain. The forecast, with the group stages still to be completed, comes from London’s Lloyd’s – the world’s leading insurance and reinsurance market. Together with the Center for Economics and Business Research (Cebr), Lloyd’s have published a research based on the overall insurable
value of the players making up the competing national teams.
The economic model used by Lloyd’s has proved itself to be working: four years ago, it foresaw Germany’s final victory in Brazil. It is based on a simple principle: the more a player is worth, the more his value is guaranteed, in case of loss of earnings due to injuries. Lloyd’s, one of the leading institutions on the insurance market in the world, have thus done their research, which is a true mine of data.
If France wins (at least in the forecasts) it is because no team is as assured as the Blues: 1,619 million euros. England reaches 1.325 million, Brazil 1.243 million, Germany 1.194 million, Argentina 1.046 million.
In a second phase, it is obviously all about the interplay of intersections and couplings, which can be decisive.
Now that the World Cup is in the middle of the third round of the group stage and the teams that will access the knockout phase are being decided, the group «G» is the one with the greatest overall value: 1.355 billion England, 1,171 billion Belgium, 106 million Tunisia and only 20 million Panama,which of all thirty-two finalists of Russia 2018 is the least insured (Costa Rica is worth 76
million insured ceilings, Peru 87 million). So little assured that the average value of an England player (44 million euros) is more than twice the size of Panama. The method applied by Lloyd’s has had positive feedback already in the first days of this World Cup. If England’s victory against Tunisia was “easy” to forecast, Senegal’s beating Poland was much more complicated to foresee. But Lloyd’s method hit the mark on that occasion too. The work presented by Lloyd’s only considered aggregated data:
teams (with their thirty squads) or groups. Single insured values of this World Cup’s greatest champions – from Cristiano Ronaldo to Lionel Messi or the Brazilian Neymar – are not included. But unofficial sources confirm that the the three football stars are also the “holders” of the three insurance policies with the highest ceilings. The national team of Portugal is in fact insured for € 699 million and of this figure about 350 million are directly attributable to Cr7, who has been a key-player from the very first start of this World Cup, scoring four goals in the first two games. To calculate the insurable values, Lloyd’s used the players ‘salary data, the sponsors’ income, along with a series of additional indicators, to build an economic model that defines the revenues of the players until the end of their career; adding up all the teams’ values, the final sum is of 14.8 billion euros, about 13.1 billion pounds. The research also provides information on the average insurable values of the players: strikers are the most valuable players – their legs are worth on average 21.69 million euros, while the midfielders have the most insurable value of the total team (38%) and players between the ages of 18 and 24 have an average highest insurable value of £ 20 million (€ 22.6 million). The research was supported by Sporting Intelligence, which provided anonymous data on the players’ salaries for each of the 32 teams participating in the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Victoria De’Ath, from Lloyd’s Class of Business
Office, maintained that “Our model had correctly predicted the winner of the FIFA World Cup 2014 (Germany), so we wanted to test it once again. The analysis makes it interesting for football fans to read. The contrast between the top and bottom teams in terms of insurable value is staggering, with the top six national teams being worth more than the other 26 combined. We cannot wait to see if some teams can challenge the odds and overcome them, and if the favorites can show their value “.Now, with all
the policies stipulated, it only remains to to be seen whether the Lloyd’s method confirms its reliability. Waiting for the next World Cup and (above all) Italy.
Paolo Golinucci – L’Economia – Corriere della Sera 25/06/2018
