21 November 2022 
The Men’s World Cup just started in Qatar, but this World Cup will not only be about football/soccer. DEI areas such as Women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and conditions of workers have been central areas of critique in the years leading up to the World Cup and even more now as it started. The Men’s 2022 World Cup is hence going to be remembered for both DEI and football/soccer results. The question is whether it is possible to predict the results via the DEI performance of the participating nations?
Denominator’s DEI Country Index measures countries’ performance on multiple sub-dimensions of DEI such as Gender, LGBTQ, Race/Ethnicity, Disability, etc. To predict the Men’s World Cup winner from DEI performance we took match by match and compared the two countries’ performance on D, E, & I. The country with the best DEI performance was set to win the match. Using the first match between Qatar and Ecuador as an example:
Below are the individual scores per DEI-pillar for each country:
| Qatar | Ecuador | |
| D | 46 | 60 |
| E | 35 | 44 |
| I | 53 | 70 |
Ecuador beats Qatar on both D, E, & I and is therefore set to win the first match. The match was played yesterday, and Ecuador did win the game.
Continuing this logic and it might become possible to predict the winner of the Men’s World Cup 2022 based on DEI-performance. The below table shows the full predictions and shows that the Netherlands will be the winner.
We will know the result in a few weeks, but no matter the outcome the Netherlands is a winning nation for its top performance on DEI. Congratulations!
To learn more about your own county’s DEI performance, please contact info@denominator.one
