Modelling Association Football Scores and Inefficiencies in the Football Betting Market
Mark J. Dixon, Stuart G. Coles · Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics)
Main finding
The model describes score outcomes well, and the authors report a positive return when its probabilities were used to select bets against bookmaker odds in their historical evaluation.
Limitations
One market era with much higher bookmaker margins than today, a short betting evaluation and modelling choices made with knowledge of the data.
Study details
- Authors
- Mark J. Dixon, Stuart G. Coles
- Published
- 1997
- Venue
- JRSS Series C 46(2), 265–280
- Status
- Published
- Evidence type
- Peer-reviewed empirical
- Evidence strength
- Moderate (our assessment of how much weight the finding can bear)
- Sport
- Association football (English league and cup matches)
- Markets
- Bookmaker fixed odds on match result
- Method
- A Poisson model for each team's goals with attack and defence strengths, home advantage, a dependence correction for low scores and down-weighting of older matches; its probabilities are compared with bookmaker prices to form a betting rule.
- Sample
- English matches from the early-to-mid 1990s; the betting evaluation covers a single later period.
- Replication
- The model is widely re-implemented as a forecasting baseline. Whether its betting returns persist in modern markets is not established.
Read the original
doi:10.1111/1467-9876.00065 (opens in a new tab)
Our summary is an original paraphrase for education. Verification: Bibliographic record checked against publisher, index or author listings. Checked 2026-10-25.