How Reliable Are Predictions When It Comes To Sports

By  //  February 5, 2020

Sports have grown to become an important part of human endeavors. It has spurred a lot of excitement amongst people, notwithstanding age, race, ethnicity, color or language. This is partly due to the suspense associated with sports.

Sports have grown to become an important part of human endeavors. It has spurred a lot of excitement amongst people, notwithstanding age, race, ethnicity, color or language. This is partly due to the suspense associated with sports. 

Sports as a Business

For some, a sport is just an entertainment, but for others, it offers more, it is serious business. Amongst the many businesses that sports have birthed is the betting business which is premised on the ability to be spot on with the predictions.

The punters stake bets on virtually everything, from match winners to outright winners. This cuts across all the sporting activities available.

How Easy is Betting on Sports

People are betting on various forms of sporting events. From the FIFA world cup in football/soccer, to the English Premier league, the NCAA Tournaments etc. But to really do well in sports betting, you need to choose a particular sport you will concentrate on. For instance, you can choose to bet on basketball and there is money to be made there.

The 2020 NCAA Tournament, for instance, is getting as interesting as ever and there are many bookmakers like the guys at Boyd’s Bets who offer good betting odds and bonuses that you can take advantage of, if you are new to beating on the NCAA tournaments. Aside from the NCAA tournament, we have the EPL, UEFA Champions league, and many others.

Are the Predictions Reliable?

How easy is it to predict and how reliable are these predictions, seeing that those who predict have no direct power over the outcome except that they subtly influence it? If they do, this is a form of match fixing which is seriously frowned at by sporting regulators. In football, we have seen people who were accused of match fixing slammed with various degrees of bans.

Notably amongst them is the former Nigerian international and coach, Samson Siasia who was banned from all football activities which includes playing and coaching for life.

This ban stands unless he is able to appeal and get a favorable outcome from it. This explains how much regulators detest people attempting to pre-empt the results by influencing it through whatever means necessary. 

From football to lawn tennis to athletics, shocking results that made a mess of predictions have occurred. Last season in the UEFA Champions League, the unthinkable happened when Liverpool overturned a 3-goal first leg deficit to win the second leg 4-0.

The result was particularly shocking and this made a mess of predictions made before the game because very few would have thought that the Barcelona team with the great Lionel Messi would go to Anfield and not only concede four goals but fail to score one that would have seen them forging ahead into the finals.  

In the field of boxing, there have been shocking results too. The most recent was the fight between Andy Ruiz Jr and Anthony Joshua where the former defeated the latter to clinch the heavyweight belts.

Anthony Joshua would later reclaim his belts in a mandatory rematch at Saudi Arabia. What made that shocking was the fact that Andy Ruiz Jr was not even in the picture as a probable challenger for Joshua until his main challenger pulled out and a makeshift had to be arranged and the person of the Mexican American, Andy Ruiz Jr showed up. How many punters would have predicted that?

Sometime ago, Lennox Lewis unexpectedly lost to Hassim Rahman. Boxing fraternity would not have expected that the then heavyweight champion would have lost to a less fancied foe like Rahman.

Thanks to a rematch opportunity where Lewis was able to reclaim his belt in a convincing fashion by knocking out his challenger.

Lawn tennis also has a way of making a mockery of predictions, especially in the female category. Who would have thought that tennis legend, Serena Williams would still be struggling to get that elusive Grand Slam title that would see her equal the age-long record set by Margaret Court.

She keeps being demystified by green horns. This happened last year in the several grand slam titles that would have seen her equal the record.

The trend has continued this year in the first slam of the year, Australian Open where she lost to another rookie. 

In a similar vein, Rafael Nadal was stopped in his tracks in his pursuit of equalling Roger Federer’s record of 20 grand slams as he was ousted in the quarter-final stage by French star, Dominic Them. Few would have predicted that, but again, like a biscuit, it broke elsewhere.

In a similar vein, Rafael Nadal was stopped in his tracks in his pursuit of equalling Roger Federer’s record of 20 grand slams as he was ousted in the quarter-final stage by French star, Dominic Them. Few would have predicted that, but again, like a biscuit, it broke elsewhere.

So much for sports. How about personal awards? For a long while, the award for the best player in the world was being alternated between the Argentine star, Lionel Messi and Portuguese machine, Cristiano Ronaldo.

In 2016, a most unlikely player, Luka Modric broke the jinx by galvanizing the Croatian team to the final of the FIFA World Cup. 

The art of accurately predicting results and outcome in sports is not as straightforward as upset seems to be the name of the game. Sport outfits seem to take the game as it comes and result, most times hinge on the form of the sports person or team going into the contest.

Most sporting activities could be likened to biscuits which could break where you least expect. No prediction is certain, it is like a lottery. If not doctored, there is no assurance of accuracy.

Predicting the likelihood of a sporting event having a particular outcome is never easy, but mastery comes with knowing the sports you are predicting.

Hence, it is always advisable to ensure you only stake your money on sports or sporting events you know much about already, if you do not want to lose your money.

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