Match forecasts in UEFA club competitions: Elo ratings versus Transfermarkt valuations

Gergely Csurilla and L\'aszl\'o Csat\'o

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: The pre-season strengths of European football clubs are usually measured by two proxies in the literature. Football Club Elo Ratings provide strictly performance-based Elo ratings from the early days of the European Cups, while Transfermarkt valuations are crowd-based estimates of squad market values. This paper compares them by evaluating their ability to forecast the results of matches played in the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League between the seasons 2020/21 and 2024/25. The two indicators yield almost identical out-of-sample accuracy when used separately. Combining the two measures leads to a modest improvement, but the best aggregation procedure is sensitive to the forecast target. Our results suggest that seeding based on Elo ratings would be (closely) optimal.

Date: 2026-09
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