Data Science in Football: A Statistical Analysis of Online Bookmakers' Odds

Abstract

Football is one of the most popular sports in the world. Because of this, it is not uncommon to hear about the
statistics of this sports modality; the quotation or odds is one of them. The main objective of this work is to
analyze and generate insights from the odds of football matches in online bookmakers. Among the questions
answered in this work are: Is there a winning bias for the home team? How do bookmakers make money? How
good are the odds from bookmakers? How is the wisdom of the crowd related to sports betting? It will also
be seen how statistical fallacies can arise during sports analysis and how people (fans, bettors and sponsors,
among others) are exposed to random and high-impact events.