Wages of wins: could an amateur make money from match outcome predictions?
This work addresses the practical application of sports prediction models for bettors, though it is incremental in showing the disconnect between accuracy and profitability.
The authors investigated whether their match outcome prediction models could generate profits through sports betting, testing on NCAAB, NBA, and NFL seasons, and found it possible but challenging, noting that high prediction accuracy does not always lead to high payouts.
Evaluating the accuracies of models for match outcome predictions is nice and well but in the end the real proof is in the money to be made by betting. To evaluate the question whether the models developed by us could be used easily to make money via sports betting, we evaluate three cases: NCAAB post-season, NBA season, and NFL season, and find that it is possible yet not without its pitfalls. In particular, we illustrate that high accuracy does not automatically equal high pay-out, by looking at the type of match-ups that are predicted correctly by different models.