Predicting Football Match Outcomes with Machine Learning Approaches

Abstract

The increasing use of data-driven approaches has led to the development of models to predict football match outcomes. However, predicting match outcomes accurately remains a challenge due to the sport's inherent unpredictability. In this study, we have investigated the usage of different machine learning models in predicting the outcome of English Premier League matches. We assessed the performance of random forest, logistic regression, linear support vector classifier and extreme gradient boosting models for binary and multiclass classification. These models are trained with datasets obtained using different sampling techniques. The result showed that the models performed better when trained with dataset obtained using a balanced sampling technique for binary classification. Additionally, the models' predictions were evaluated by conducting simulation on football betting profits based on the 2022-2023 EPL season. The model achieved the highest accuracy is the binary class random forest, but the model provided the highest football betting profit is the binary class logistic regression.