Focus on Sport: Making up the Results: the Work of the Football Pools Panel, 1963-1997

Abstract

Since 1963, a panel of experts has determined for gambling purposes the results of soccer matches in Britain which were included in the football pools weekly game but which could not be played because of adverse weather. The paper models its behaviour and highlights differences between the factors which appear to influence the panel's predictions and those that matter to the outcomes of real games. Panel results are more predictable than real results and the paper offers a specific recommendation to the Pools Panel to render its judgments less predictable. The panel also appears to overemphasize the importance of the recent away form of the away team. An explanation for this systematic difference in the statistical estimates of Pools Panel and actual results is found in the home advantage literature in sports statistics.