A simulation-basedmethodology for predicting football match outcomes considering experts’ opinions:The 2010 and 2014 footballworld cup cases

Abstract

In this paper we propose a simulation-based method for predicting the 2010 and 2014Football World Cup. Adopting a bayesian perspective, we modeled the number of goals of two opposingteams as a Poisson distribution whose mean is proportional to the relative technical level of opponents.FIFA ratings were taken as the measure of technical level of teams and experts’ opinions about scoresof matches were taken to construct prior distribution of parameters. Just before each round, tournamentsimulations were performed in order to estimate probabilities of events of main interest for audience andbettors such as qualifying to the knockout stage, reaching semi-finals, reaching the final match, winningthe tournament, among others.