Madsen Jens Koed
Department of Psychological and Behavioural Sciences, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 31;20(1):e0312487. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0312487. eCollection 2025.
Football's inherent volatility and low-scoring nature present unique challenges for predicting outcomes. This study investigates the efficacy of Wisdom of the Crowd in forecasting football match outcomes as well as expected goals (XG) across a Premier League season. Participants predicted team goal counts, which were then compared to actual expected goals (XG) and match results. Results across 760 team predictions reveal that while Wisdom of the Crowd accurately predicts XG on average, it overestimates 'big-6' teams and underestimates others, hinting at inherent biases. Notably, however, collective crowd predictions outperform individual estimates consistently, affirming the power of collective intelligence. Furthermore, when tested against betting odds, Wisdom of the Crowd demonstrates limited profitability, indicating its potential as a supplementary rather than sole prediction tool. These findings underscore the nuanced dynamics of football prediction and highlight the utility of collective wisdom in navigating its complexities. Overall, this study contributes insights into crowd prediction dynamics and underscores its potential in football analytics, shedding light on its implications for decision-making and understanding group behaviour in sports forecasting contexts.
足球固有的波动性和低得分特性给比赛结果预测带来了独特挑战。本研究调查了群体智慧在预测英超一个赛季的足球比赛结果以及预期进球（XG）方面的有效性。参与者预测球队进球数，然后将其与实际预期进球（XG）和比赛结果进行比较。760次球队预测的结果显示，虽然群体智慧平均能准确预测预期进球，但它高估了“六大”球队，而低估了其他球队，这暗示了其中存在的固有偏差。然而，值得注意的是，群体的集体预测始终优于个人估计，这证实了集体智慧的力量。此外，与博彩赔率相比，群体智慧的盈利潜力有限，这表明它作为一种辅助而非唯一的预测工具的潜力。这些发现凸显了足球预测的细微差别，并强调了集体智慧在应对其复杂性方面的作用。总体而言，本研究为群体预测动态提供了见解，并强调了其在足球分析中的潜力，揭示了其在体育预测背景下对决策和理解群体行为的影响。
