A profitable model for predicting the over/under market in football

Edward Wheatcroft

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The over/under 2.5 goals betting market allows gamblers to bet on whether the total number of goals in a football match will exceed 2.5. In this paper, a set of ratings, named ‘Generalised Attacking Performance’ (GAP) ratings, are defined which measure the attacking and defensive performance of each team in a league. GAP ratings are used to forecast matches in ten European football leagues and their profitability is tested in the over/under market using two value betting strategies. GAP ratings with match statistics such as shots and shots on target as inputs are shown to yield better predictive value than the number of goals. An average profit of around 0.8 percent per bet taken is demonstrated over twelve years when using only shots and corners (and not goals) as inputs. The betting strategy is shown to be robust by comparing it to a random betting strategy.

Keywords: probability forecasting; sports forecasting; football forecasting; football predictions; soccer predictions; value betting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2020-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-for and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in International Journal of Forecasting, 1, July, 2020, 36(3), pp. 916 - 932. ISSN: 0169-2070

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:103712

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