CASE STUDY - GLOBAL SPORTING EVENT
NEXUS called the World Cup before it began.
NEXUS called the World Cup before it began.
Called it
Spain
Called it
Argentina
Called it
England v France
Watch the case study
The ultimate prediction problem
The World Cup might look like the ultimate prediction problem, because it is. National teams play relatively few games, squads change constantly, and having the world’s best players doesn’t necessarily create the world’s best team. There are countless signals and relatively few opportunities to see how they come together. Yet before a ball was kicked, we wanted to see whether NEXUS could make sense of more than a century of football history and predict how the tournament would unfold.
150 years of history, meet this year’s squads
NEXUS combined international match results dating all the way back to 1872 with contemporary squad-level information derived from EA Sports FC / FIFA player ratings. That gave it more than 150 years of competitive history alongside a current view of the players available to each country.
150+ yrs
International match results, dating back to 1872
Squad-level
Contemporary squad strength from player-level ratings
Odds excluded
Sportsbook odds kept out of the model, used only as an independent benchmark
Three calls, all before kickoff
Spain
to win
СONFIRMED
Argentina
in the final
СONFIRMED
England & France
third-place playoff
СONFIRMED
All before the tournament began.
NEXUS app — captured pre-tournament
This is bigger than picking a winner.
Sport is full of decisions made before the outcome is known - from performance and recruitment to pricing, sponsorship, media and inventory. NEXUS demonstrates what becomes possible when those decisions can start with a more accurate view of what is likely to happen next.
