First leaderboard revealed as World Cup Qatar 2022 Predictor Competition attracts huge interest

QATAR. The Moodie Davitt Report readers’ competition dedicated to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, now well underway, has attracted an impressive 198 entries from all around the global travel retail and aviation world.

You can still enter (see the yellow entry button below), though you better move fast as the leader already has ten points. Plenty of time to catch up though.

Our first leaderboard is revealed below with food & beverage expert Kevin Zajax (did you correctly predict your native Australia’s thumping defeat by France Kevin? Surely not…) taking a narrow lead from Mars Wrigley Global Customer Development Head, UK-based Alex Rudd.

There’s a real log-jam in third place with Riyadh-based daa International Concessions Director Neil McLeod among them. That suggests Neil may have been one of the few people to correctly pick Saudi Arabia to shock tournament favourites Argentina in arguably the greatest World Cup shock of all time.

We are delighted to announce that Qatar Duty Free has come onboard as an event partner. The Hamad International Airport travel retailer is providing great prizes (details coming soon) as excitement builds both for the competition and the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 itself, which has already thrown up one major shock (Saudi Arabia beating Argentina 2-1) and plenty of thrilling matches.

As reported, Qatar Duty Free (QDF) has been named as Official Retail Store for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. The agreement includes a licence to exclusively sell all related merchandise in the fan zones and at all eight stadiums.

QDF also just opened a FIFA store at Hamad International Airport’ s magnificent new expansion, inaugurated on 10 November.

The new FIFA store at Hamad International Airport, opened ten days before the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 kicked off

Additionally The Moodie Davitt Report is providing charity-based prizes for first, second and third individual contestants with cash donations of US$500, US$300 and US$200 paid to a charity of their choice.

The competition, open to anyone involved in the aviation and travel retail sectors (mandatory), is based on match predictions for the 32 teams in a group stage and knockout format. The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 concludes on 18 December with the World Cup Final at the Lusail Iconic Stadium.

The rules are simple. Qualified readers simply need to make a score prediction in each of the matches, and will be awarded points based on the accuracy of their predictions. You receive 3 points for an exact score prediction and 1 point if you predict the right result (win or draw) without getting the score correct. It’s simple, fun and all for a great cause.

You can sign up here. Just create an account and you can immediately begin saving your score predictions. Predicting is simple – scroll down to select a score for each match throughout the group, knockout and final phases. Predictions will automatically save the moment you make them, while you will be able to enter or modify your scores up to ten- minutes before each match kick-off.

FIFA World Cup Showdown

Two of travel retail’s leading players have taken up The Moodie Davitt Report’s challenge as to who can best predict the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 results.

The first, perhaps not surprisingly, is Qatar Duty Free, whose Vice President Thabet Musleh reckons his team will dismiss us as easily as his beloved Liverpool will ultimately head off Manchester City in the UK Premiership.

Fellow Liverpool supporter Barry Geoghegan’s dynamic Duty Free Global has also taken up The Moodie Davitt Report’s challenge.

Whichever companies lose the match-up will fund a US$250 cleft operaton for Smile Train* and change a child’s and a family’s life forever.

We encourage you to set up your own challenges, with peer companies or within divisions of a company. Keep us posted on how you are getting on.

Simply visit https://moodiedavitt.football-predictor.net

How to enter as a team

If you prefer you can (also) enter a team (for example, Team DFS Hong Kong; Team ARI Middle East; Team Qatar Duty Free; Team Heathrow Airport; Team Dufry Brazil; Team Puig Travel Retail; Team Mondelez International Travel Retail; Team Dubai Duty Free; Team TFWA etc, for example)

To enter as a team, choose ‘Team’ as your first name when you sign up and enter the name of your team as your surname (For instance ‘Team Moodie Davitt’).

And you can play internal ‘match-ups’ — pitting, say, finance against warehousing, marketing v sales etc, or even company against company. Dufry France vs Dufry Brazil vs Dufry Argentina vs Dufry UK etc might be very interesting. Anyone willing to take on Team Moodie Davitt? Be warned, you know we never get our numbers wrong…

Form guide (with a health warning)

To help with your predictions, listed below are the FIFA official rankings for all 32 teams alongside the groups each team is playing in. Not that you can necessarily rely on the form book, however, given that 51st-ranked Saudi Arabia shocked third-ranked Argentina 2-1 earlier today.

For details on how points are calculated, please visit the rules page once you have signed up.

*About Smile Train

Smile Train (www.SmileTrain.org) is the world’s largest cleft-focused organisation. It operates with a model of true sustainability — providing training, funding, and resources to empower local medical professionals in 70+ countries to provide 100%-free cleft surgery and other forms of essential cleft care in their own communities.

Over the past 20 years, Smile Train has transformed the lives of more than 1.5 million children. The organisation aims to double its reach in the next five years, putting more children than ever before on track to a better future.

The Moodie Davitt Report has worked with Smile Train for the past 15 years, helping to raise well over US$2 million, transforming more than 8,000 children’s lives.

Food & Beverage The Magazine eZine