Football Matches Outcomes Prediction and Searching Optimal Bet Strategy

Student: Bikbulatov Albert

Supervisor: Marat Z. Kurbangaleev

Educational Programme: Economics (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 10

Year of Graduation: 2018

The present research examines opportunities of machine learning algorithms to predict football matches outcomes more accurately than bookmakers and to build optimal betting strategy to generate positive return on investments. The study includes selection of optimal explanatory variables, data preprocessing, finding best algorithms from classical approaches and designing special models to compare performances of different betting strategies. Apart from the fact that final model can be a good additional source of income, it will be able to identify the most important factors determining the success of the football team and be widely used in sport management. The study is mostly empirical and based on the data that contains more than 10000 matches from top-5 European leagues

Full text (added May 10, 2018)

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