Pakistan did not win the World Cup of Polo Championship 2022

Claim: Pakistan won the World Polo Championship 2022 by beating Mexico in the Final 11-8. 

Fact: Spain won the World Polo Championship 2022. The Pakistan team defeated Mexico in a match 11-8, placing it in 5th position in the world cup rankings. 

On 9 November 2022, a Twitter handle called @CPEC_UPDATE claimed that Pakistan had won the World Cup of Polo Championship 2022 by defeating Mexico 11-8.

Fact or Fiction?

The XII Federation of International Polo World Championship was held this year from 29 October 2022 to 6 November 2022 at two different venues in the United States. The preliminary games were held at the Valiente Polo Farm, and the semi-final and final rounds were held at the National Polo Center, Wellington. 

According to the tournament’s official website, there were two categories, Zone A and Zone B. Zone A teams were Argentina, Mexico, Pakistan and Spain. Zone B teams were Australia, Italy, Uruguay and USA. 

According to the official page, Spain was crowned XII FIP World Polo Champions, and the USA earned the silver medal victory. Uruguay and Argentina competed for the third position, and Pakistan ended up in the fifth position on the scoreboard. 

Virality

Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 17-day period since 9 November 2022 to 25 November 2022 using the following search terms:

• “Pakistan” “polo” “world cup”
• “پاکستان” “پولو” “ورلڈ کپ” 

We found tweets here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

On Facebook, we found over 30 posts with over 2,070 interactions. Some of these can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here,                                     

Conclusion: Pakistan did not win the Polo World Cup 2022, Spain did. Pakistan scored 5th position.