Solving the Problem of Inadequate Scoring Rules for Assessing Probabilistic Football Forecast Models

Abstract

Despite the massive popularity of probabilistic (association) football forecasting models, and the relative simplicity of the outcome of such forecasts (they require only three probability values corresponding to home win, draw, and away win) there is no agreed scoring rule to determine their forecast accuracy. Moreover, the various scoring rules used for validation in previous studies are inadequate since they fail to recognise that football outcomes represent a ranked (ordinal) scale. This raises severe concerns about the validity of conclusions from previous studies. There is a well-established generic scoring rule, the Rank Probability Score (RPS), which has been missed by previous researchers, but which properly assesses football forecasting models.

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