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Forecasting sport: the behaviour and performance of football tipsters

2000; Elsevier BV; Volume: 16; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0169-2070(00)00050-9

1872-8200

David Forrest, Robert Simmons,

Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing

Professional advice is available in several forecasting contexts, such as share prices, sales and the weather. English newspaper tipsters offer professional advice on the outcomes of English and Scottish football (soccer) matches. Such advice could potentially inform selections of bettors in fixed odds or pools betting. This paper investigates the effectiveness of the guidance given by newspaper tipsters. Employing a sample of three tipsters and 1694 English league games, we find that tipster success rates are higher than would follow from random forecasting methods. We identify some differences between the processes by which actual results and tipster forecasts are determined. Likelihood-ratio tests imply that the tipsters fail adequately to utilise easily obtainable public information on teams’ strength. Further tests show that only one of three tipsters appears to make successful use of other unspecified information relevant to game outcomes. A consensus forecast across the three tipsters appears to outperform any single tipster.