September 1, 2021 completed

Who Will Win the FIFA 2022 World Cup?

1st place UNSW x Atlassian Datathon project — simulating 1,000 rounds of matches to predict World Cup qualifiers

1st Place Result
1,000 rounds Simulations
UNSW x Atlassian Competition
PythonMonte Carlo SimulationData AnalysisVisualisation
Datathon team presentation
The winning team

The Problem

Who would win the FIFA 2022 World Cup? Rather than gut feel or pundit predictions, we took a data-driven approach — simulating thousands of match outcomes to find the most probable winner.

Approach

Project roadmap and methodology
Our approach
Data schema design
Data schema

We simulated 1,000 rounds of round-robin football matches using historical performance data, team rankings, and match statistics. Each simulation produced a full tournament bracket, and we aggregated the results to find the most likely outcomes.

Results of 1,000 Monte Carlo simulations
1,000 simulations
Final predictions for World Cup qualifiers
Our predictions
Interactive visualisation of simulation results
Interactive explorer

What I Learned

Monte Carlo simulation is surprisingly effective for sports prediction when you get the input distributions right. The biggest challenge was modelling home advantage and team form — static rankings miss a lot of nuance. Took 1st place at the UNSW x Atlassian Datathon.

Read our full write-up on the Atlassian Data blog →