IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v272y2019i3p1073-1081.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The wisdom of amateur crowds: Evidence from an online community of sports tipsters

Author

Listed:
  • Brown, Alasdair
  • Reade, J. James

Abstract

We analyse the accuracy of crowd forecasts produced on Oddsportal, an online community of amateur sports tipsters. Tipsters in this community are ranked according to the betting return on their tips, but there are no prizes for accuracy. Nevertheless, we find that aggregated tips in this community contain information not in betting prices. A strategy of betting when a majority predict an outcome produces average returns of 1.317% for 68,339 events. The accuracy of these forecasts stems from the wisdom of the whole crowd, as selecting sections of the crowd based on experience or past forecast accuracy does not improve betting returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Brown, Alasdair & Reade, J. James, 2019. "The wisdom of amateur crowds: Evidence from an online community of sports tipsters," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 272(3), pages 1073-1081.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:272:y:2019:i:3:p:1073-1081
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2018.07.015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221718306209
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2018.07.015?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter Norman, 2006. "The strategy of professional forecasting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 441-466, August.
    2. McHale, Ian & Morton, Alex, 2011. "A Bradley-Terry type model for forecasting tennis match results," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 619-630, April.
    3. Jacob A. Mincer & Victor Zarnowitz, 1969. "The Evaluation of Economic Forecasts," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Forecasts and Expectations: Analysis of Forecasting Behavior and Performance, pages 3-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Ioannis Asimakopoulos & John Goddard, 2004. "Forecasting football results and the efficiency of fixed-odds betting," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(1), pages 51-66.
    5. James Reade, 2014. "Information And Predictability: Bookmakers, Prediction Markets And Tipsters As Forecasters," Journal of Prediction Markets, University of Buckingham Press, vol. 8(1), pages 43-76.
    6. Klaassen, Franc J. G. M. & Magnus, Jan R., 2003. "Forecasting the winner of a tennis match," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 257-267, July.
    7. David V. Budescu & Eva Chen, 2015. "Identifying Expertise to Extract the Wisdom of Crowds," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(2), pages 267-280, February.
    8. Phillip E. Pfeifer & Yael Grushka-Cockayne & Kenneth C. Lichtendahl, 2014. "The Promise of Prediction Contests," The American Statistician, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 68(4), pages 264-270, November.
    9. Alasdair Brown & Dooruj Rambaccussing & J. James Reade & Giambattista Rossi, 2018. "Forecasting With Social Media: Evidence From Tweets On Soccer Matches," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(3), pages 1748-1763, July.
    10. Hwang, Joon Ho & Kim, Min-Su, 2015. "Misunderstanding of the binomial distribution, market inefficiency, and learning behavior: Evidence from an exotic sports betting market," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 243(1), pages 333-344.
    11. Dixon, Mark J. & Pope, Peter F., 2004. "The value of statistical forecasts in the UK association football betting market," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 697-711.
    12. McHale, Ian & Morton, Alex, 2011. "A Bradley-Terry type model for forecasting tennis match results," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 619-630.
    13. Vaughan Williams,Leighton (ed.), 2005. "Information Efficiency in Financial and Betting Markets," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521816038, September.
    14. Busche, Kelly & Hall, Christopher D, 1988. "An Exception to the Risk Preference Anomaly," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(3), pages 337-346, July.
    15. Peeters, Thomas, 2018. "Testing the Wisdom of Crowds in the field: Transfermarkt valuations and international soccer results," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 17-29.
    16. Forrest, David & Simmons, Robert, 2000. "Forecasting sport: the behaviour and performance of football tipsters," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 317-331.
    17. O'Leary, Daniel E., 2017. "Crowd performance in prediction of the World Cup 2014," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 260(2), pages 715-724.
    18. Ma, Tiejun & Tang, Leilei & McGroarty, Frank & Sung, Ming-Chien & Johnson, Johnnie E. V, 2016. "Time is money: Costing the impact of duration misperception in market prices," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 255(2), pages 397-410.
    19. Kenneth C. Lichtendahl & Yael Grushka-Cockayne & Phillip E. Pfeifer, 2013. "The Wisdom of Competitive Crowds," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 61(6), pages 1383-1398, December.
    20. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    21. Martin Spann & Bernd Skiera, 2009. "Sports forecasting: a comparison of the forecast accuracy of prediction markets, betting odds and tipsters," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 55-72.
    22. repec:cup:judgdm:v:6:y:2011:i:1:p:58-72 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Clintin P. Davis-Stober & David V. Budescu & Stephen B. Broomell & Jason Dana, 2015. "The Composition of Optimally Wise Crowds," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 12(3), pages 130-143.
    24. Easton, Stephen & Uylangco, Katherine, 2010. "Forecasting outcomes in tennis matches using within-match betting markets," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 564-575, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Green, Lawrence & Sung, Ming-Chien & Ma, Tiejun & Johnson, Johnnie E. V., 2019. "To what extent can new web-based technology improve forecasts? Assessing the economic value of information derived from Virtual Globes and its rate of diffusion in a financial market," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 278(1), pages 226-239.
    2. J. James Reade & Carl Singleton & Alasdair Brown, 2021. "Evaluating strange forecasts: The curious case of football match scorelines," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 68(2), pages 261-285, May.
    3. Arif Yüce & Sevda Gökce Yüce & Hakan Katırcı & Volkan Aydoğdu & Weisheng Chiu & Mark D. Griffiths, 2023. "The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sports Betting Tipsters as Professional Bettors: A Qualitative Interview Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-19, May.
    4. Singleton, Carl & Reade, J. James & Brown, Alasdair, 2020. "Going with your gut: The (In)accuracy of forecast revisions in a football score prediction game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    5. Andrés Barge-Gil & Alfredo Garcia-Hiernaux, 2020. "Staking in Sports Betting Under Unknown Probabilities: Practical Guide for Profitable Bettors," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(6), pages 593-609, August.
    6. Jaspersen, Johannes G., 2022. "Convex combinations in judgment aggregation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 299(2), pages 780-794.
    7. He, Xue-Zhong & Treich, Nicolas, 2017. "Prediction market prices under risk aversion and heterogeneous beliefs," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 105-114.
    8. Michels, Rouven & Ötting, Marius & Langrock, Roland, 2023. "Bettors’ reaction to match dynamics: Evidence from in-game betting," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 310(3), pages 1118-1127.
    9. Zibarzani, Masoumeh & Abumalloh, Rabab Ali & Nilashi, Mehrbakhsh & Samad, Sarminah & Alghamdi, O.A. & Nayer, Fatima Khan & Ismail, Muhammed Yousoof & Mohd, Saidatulakmal & Mohammed Akib, Noor Adelyna, 2022. "Customer satisfaction with Restaurants Service Quality during COVID-19 outbreak: A two-stage methodology," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    10. Butler, David & Butler, Robert & Eakins, John, 2021. "Expert performance and crowd wisdom: Evidence from English Premier League predictions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 288(1), pages 170-182.
    11. Taylor, James W. & Taylor, Kathryn S., 2023. "Combining probabilistic forecasts of COVID-19 mortality in the United States," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(1), pages 25-41.
    12. Hongzhou Chen & Xiaolin Duan & Abdulmotaleb El Saddik & Wei Cai, 2024. "Political Leanings in Web3 Betting: Decoding the Interplay of Political and Profitable Motives," Papers 2407.14844, arXiv.org.
    13. Ramirez, Philip & Reade, J. James & Singleton, Carl, 2023. "Betting on a buzz: Mispricing and inefficiency in online sportsbooks," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1413-1423.
    14. Holmes, Benjamin & McHale, Ian G. & Żychaluk, Kamila, 2024. "Detecting individual preferences and erroneous verdicts in mixed martial arts judging using Bayesian hierarchical models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 312(2), pages 733-745.
    15. Yu, Dian & Gao, Jianjun & Wang, Tongyao, 2022. "Betting market equilibrium with heterogeneous beliefs: A prospect theory-based model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 298(1), pages 137-151.
    16. Niklas Valentin Lehmann, 2023. "Forecasting skill of a crowd-prediction platform: A comparison of exchange rate forecasts," Papers 2312.09081, arXiv.org.
    17. Wen-Kuo Chen & Dalianus Riantama & Long-Sheng Chen, 2020. "Using a Text Mining Approach to Hear Voices of Customers from Social Media toward the Fast-Food Restaurant Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-17, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. J. James Reade & Carl Singleton & Alasdair Brown, 2021. "Evaluating strange forecasts: The curious case of football match scorelines," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 68(2), pages 261-285, May.
    2. Angelini, Giovanni & De Angelis, Luca, 2019. "Efficiency of online football betting markets," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 712-721.
    3. Butler, David & Butler, Robert & Eakins, John, 2021. "Expert performance and crowd wisdom: Evidence from English Premier League predictions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 288(1), pages 170-182.
    4. Ramirez, Philip & Reade, J. James & Singleton, Carl, 2023. "Betting on a buzz: Mispricing and inefficiency in online sportsbooks," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1413-1423.
    5. Green, Lawrence & Sung, Ming-Chien & Ma, Tiejun & Johnson, Johnnie E. V., 2019. "To what extent can new web-based technology improve forecasts? Assessing the economic value of information derived from Virtual Globes and its rate of diffusion in a financial market," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 278(1), pages 226-239.
    6. Sung, Ming-Chien & McDonald, David C.J. & Johnson, Johnnie E.V. & Tai, Chung-Ching & Cheah, Eng-Tuck, 2019. "Improving prediction market forecasts by detecting and correcting possible over-reaction to price movements," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 272(1), pages 389-405.
    7. He, Xue-Zhong & Treich, Nicolas, 2017. "Prediction market prices under risk aversion and heterogeneous beliefs," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 105-114.
    8. Hubáček, Ondřej & Šír, Gustav, 2023. "Beating the market with a bad predictive model," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 691-719.
    9. Pascal Flurin Meier & Raphael Flepp & Egon Franck, 2021. "Are sports betting markets semistrong efficient? Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic," Working Papers 387, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    10. Brown, Alasdair & Yang, Fuyu, 2019. "The wisdom of large and small crowds: Evidence from repeated natural experiments in sports betting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 288-296.
    11. Stekler, H.O. & Sendor, David & Verlander, Richard, 2010. "Issues in sports forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 606-621, July.
      • Herman O. Stekler & David Sendor & Richard Verlander, 2009. "Issues in Sports Forecasting," Working Papers 2009-002, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    12. Wunderlich, Fabian & Memmert, Daniel, 2020. "Are betting returns a useful measure of accuracy in (sports) forecasting?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 713-722.
    13. Sperb, Luis Felipe Costa & Sung, Ming-Chien & Johnson, Johnnie E.V. & Ma, Tiejun, 2019. "Keeping a weather eye on prediction markets: The influence of environmental conditions on forecasting accuracy," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 321-335.
    14. Bernardo, Giovanni & Ruberti, Massimo & Verona, Roberto, 2019. "Semi-strong inefficiency in the fixed odds betting market: Underestimating the positive impact of head coach replacement in the main European soccer leagues," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 239-246.
    15. Angelini, Giovanni & De Angelis, Luca & Singleton, Carl, 2022. "Informational efficiency and behaviour within in-play prediction markets," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 282-299.
    16. Singleton, Carl & Reade, J. James & Brown, Alasdair, 2020. "Going with your gut: The (In)accuracy of forecast revisions in a football score prediction game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    17. Leitner, Christoph & Zeileis, Achim & Hornik, Kurt, 2010. "Forecasting sports tournaments by ratings of (prob)abilities: A comparison for the EUROÂ 2008," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 471-481, July.
    18. Brown, Alasdair & Reade, J. James & Vaughan Williams, Leighton, 2019. "When are prediction market prices most informative?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 420-428.
    19. Andrew Grant & Anastasios Oikonomidis & Alistair C. Bruce & Johnnie E. V. Johnson, 2018. "New entry, strategic diversity and efficiency in soccer betting markets: the creation and suppression of arbitrage opportunities," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(18), pages 1799-1816, December.
    20. Bernardo, Giovanni & Ruberti, Massimo & Verona, Roberto, 2015. "Testing semi-strong efficiency in a fixed odds betting market: Evidence from principal European football leagues," MPRA Paper 66414, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:272:y:2019:i:3:p:1073-1081. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.