About oddsinshadow
What We Do (in the shadows)
oddsinshadow provides probabilistic forecasts for major football leagues around the world. Currently, we provide forecasts for the Big 5 European club leagues and the three UEFA club tournaments. Using statistical models and Elo rating systems, we calculate the likelihood of various outcomes for teams throughout the season.
Our forecasts help fans, analysts, and enthusiasts understand not just who might win, but the probability of different scenarios playing out across domestic leagues and continental competitions.
How It Works
For the models we currently have up and running, we use Elo ratings to determine team strength, which we get directly from the always-reliable website clubelo.com. We could calculate our own ratings, but clubelo already does a great job and provides a working API that lets us fetch Elo numbers on a day-to-day basis.
With these Elo ratings, we estimate how many goals each team will score on average, and then use a Poisson model to simulate the final score of each match. We run this simulation about 10,000 times for every scheduled game and voilà, we get an estimate of how often each team wins the league. Nerds might know this as a Monte Carlo simulation.
After running these 10,000 simulations, we can provide estimates for things like title odds, chances of a top-4 finish (for Champions League qualification), and relegation risk. For UEFA tournaments, we estimate the probability of progressing through each round of the knockout stage.
The numbers are refreshed once a day, around the time all European matches for the day are finished, typically at midnight Central European Time.
Contact Us
Have a question, suggestion, or just want to say how much our forecast sucks? We'd love to hear from you. Fill out the form below or reach out directly.
📧 Email us at: oddsinshadow@gmail.com
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