With the start of the World Cup in Russia less than a month away, UBS deployed a team of 18 analysts and editors, and ran a computer simulation of the tournament 10,000 times, in an effort to predict the likely winner of the tournament.
It’s a familiar game for UBS and other banks, many of which run competing models to predict the quadrennial World Cup. While the simulations might sounds impressive, they’re not always accurate: In 2014 UBS said hosts Brazil would prevail, only to see the team humiliated in a 7-1 semifinal loss to Germany, the eventual winner.
But the headline is that tournament model, which UBS dubs the World Football Elo Rating. It turns up a few surprises, for sure: long-term underachievers England are ranked fourth, with an 8.5 percent chance of winning the World Cup and a 66.2 percent chance of making it through to the quarter-finals. That’s the third-highest probability of any team in the tournament.