Using bookmaker odds to predict the final result of football matches

Abstract

There are many online bookmakers that allow betting money in virtually every field of sports, from football to chess. The vast majority of online bookmakers operate based on standard principles and establish the odds for sporting events. These odds constantly change due to bets placed by gamblers. The amount of changes is associated with the amount of money bet on a given odd. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the possibility of predicting how upcoming football matches will end based on changes in bookmaker odds. A number of different classifiers that predict the final result of a football match were developed. The results obtained confirm that the knowledge of a group of people about football matches gathered in the form of bookmaker odds can be successfully used for predicting the final result. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.