Which of these modern sports is actually the easiest to predict?

[Dave1]

Someone who grew up watching basketball every day, for example will naturally find NBA games much easier to understand and predict than football and someone who has followed tennis for years might also say the same about tennis.

For those who have followed different sports over the years. Out of football, tennis, NBA, Swimming, golf, horse racing, wrestling, Car Racing, Hockey and other modern sports, which one do you personally find easiest to predict and do you think that is because the sport is actually more predictable or it is simply because you understand it much better!!!

Swimming, horse racing or car racing are the worst because there are a lot of players or animals that are involved. So if we talk about odds, 1vs1 sports are the best obviously because there are only 2 opposing teams.

Definitely, if makes it easier to pick the winner because you have followed it mostly and so you understand the teams or the players and most likely have a better chance to predict who are going to win.

[Darker45]

Of course, the more familiar you are with the sport or league, the easier it is to make a prediction as to who or which team likely wins or loses.

In gambling, however, the goal isn't simply to accurately predict who or which team wins. The goal is to be profitable, and correctly picking the right players or teams most of the time doesn't necessarily equate to profitability. You could be right 8 out of 10 but your bankroll remains net negative.

Sports betting is playing with odds, calculating risks, and not just predicting who wins or loses.

[Cointxz]

My obvious choice is football, because I have followed football from my childhood days and coming from a country like Nigeria it is almost impossible not to grow up around the game. You will see people playing it everywhere you watch it on television, you discuss it with friends and families and with time you naturally become very familiar with the teams, players, competitions and how the game works.

Football is the hardest sports to predict for me due to lots of players involved that can changed the outcome of the game. Unlike you, football is not very popular in my country since there’s no local tv channel broadcasting it and there’s no league available in my country unlike basketball which is very popular here.

Basketball is much easier to predict for me especially player props and asian handicap matches since consistency is easy to spot on basketball team.

I have good WR on e-sports before when I’m still active in online games.

[Shinpako09]

Since you said football is easy to predict, may I ask if you are profitable with football now? Coz I think familiarity alone isn't enough. In sports betting, you need skills and luck. Familiarity makes it easy for you to make your pick and analysis, etc., but it doesn't make it easy to predict the outcome. Coz if we say easy to predict, it means you are very confident with your pick and that it has a high probability, and you are profitable.

There is no such thing as a guaranteed win, even if you are very familiar with the sport. Just my opinion. Sports betting has never been easy to predict, at least for me. Coz if there is really a sport that is easy to predict, bettors would have taken advantage long ago.

[Findingnemo]

No sport is easier, and if it is that easy then it won't be a popular one.

For example you grew up watching about football so you have more understanding about that game compared to others so you can get the sense of who will likely be the winner when two teams are playing but it can't be right all the time, the same way racing, tennis, golf or every game.

[Marvelockg]

The more you become familiar with a sports, the easier it is for you to predict the potential outcome of each game. those that are not familiar with the sports you are interested in will generally fid it difficult to make prediction on those sports like you will do. it is about interest and generally, it is not even advisable to try to predict on a sports that you have little to no interest in.

Over familiarity with a kind of sports might even make it look like other sports are not good in their own way until you try them out and discover that lack of knowledge on those sports might be the reason why you have never thought of them as an interesting sports. my easiest pick will still be football because i have been around it for a long time to know the strength and weaknesses of different teams.

[Julien_Olynpic]

Personally, I readily agree with those who consider football an unpredictable sport compared to, say, tennis. This is obvious. In one case, it's a team game, with a million random substitutions and player dismissals. In tennis, a player can't be sent off because he's alone. The very fact that a draw is possible in football already makes it an unpredictable sport. Of course, you can point to the playoffs, where there are no draws, as well as the "total over" and "total under" scenarios, and that would also be true. But in the basic scenario, tennis is much more predictable. However, the predictability of the game for everyone will not bring any benefit to you personally.

[swogerino]

There is no easiest sport as you can check by the surprise results that happen in every single week in all major leagues in soccer and not only, also most other sport leagues end up with surprise results. I have said it so many times here yet I will say it again because this surprise result with an odd 1.04 comes from NBA and the team becoming champion that season was not able to win against the last place in the standings. This says a lot as why there is no easiest sport to predict, since gambling is massive so are the surprise results too.

[atookz]

I think it's just familiarity with football that makes it the easiest sport to guess on for me, rather than the fact that football itself is more predictable in its nature than other sports.

Consider this, football isn't particularly predictable statistically speaking, low scoring games and one red card or an own goal can change the whole thing. Compare that to tennis, which is actually far more predictable stat-wise — rankings and head-to-head records correlate strongly with results. However, for a person who is not well acquainted, tennis can seem confusing, just because of the way it is scored (deuce, tie-break, etc) and may not be obvious if you are not used to it.

IMO it's not actually which sport can be ‘objectively’ easier to predict, it's just how well you know the patterns and context of it. An individual who was raised on baseball or cricket would probably say the same about their sport.

[OsaiEmma]

You know, in football, low scoring can form interesting problem. Even if a team has real win probability of over 60% but a deflection, red card, penalty or goalkeeper error can alter the outcome of entire match. So someone can say that they understand the game well but that doesn't mean that they could accurately assess the probability of outcome, there is a hole between this two.

So I won't automatically assume that the sport I know most about is most predictable. I'd rather see which sport or league or market consistently produces meaningful difference between my estimated probability and bookmaker's price.

Yeah...I agree with you, there are just so many variables in football; this alone automatically makes it difficult to predict even if you understand the sports completely. Games like table tennis, long tennis, swimming, running, and to some extent boxing which isn't necessarily a team sport and are straightforward with less complexity might even be easier to predict than football.


So OP, i don't necessarily think understanding alone makes it easier to predict. I feel the familiarity and the level of understanding you have around the sports makes you know how to go about predicting it; you will know the different scenes that can play out, the possible outcomes, what applies and what doesn't based on your understanding of the game, but you can't exactly predict the outcome accurately because of how complex it is.

[fruktik]

Is it even possible to predict the outcome of some sports? If that were true, there would be a lot more winning bets. No, I believe this is a fallacy and a new illusory idea that will ultimately prove to be a failure again.

Let's take a more serious look at reality. What does reality say? It says there's no holy grail that will bring colossal profits. Well, that doesn't exist in the modern world of betting. It's a utopia, which it's sometimes pleasant to immerse yourself in and drift off into a world of dreams and reflection.

[Bryan jessy]

Football happens to be the most common sport and because of the familiarity with the players and each team they belong to, also knowing how well some footballers player or their strength makes people think football is predictable but the truth is that football is not actually predictable as believed just like other games, football is generally known globally unlike other sports games that lot of persons do not know about their existence, so at times when we see a particular footballer who is very good we already predicted that because he is playing for this team that very team will win the game and it turns out that the opposing team won and not the particular team we predicted though some times we get lucky that the team we predicted be the winning team actually wins so the prediction is not certain.

[Crytohillss]

The more you become familiar with a sports, the easier it is for you to predict the potential outcome of each game. those that are not familiar with the sports you are interested in will generally fid it difficult to make prediction on those sports like you will do. it is about interest and generally, it is not even advisable to try to predict on a sports that you have little to no interest in.

Over familiarity with a kind of sports might even make it look like other sports are not good in their own way until you try them out and discover that lack of knowledge on those sports might be the reason why you have never thought of them as an interesting sports. my easiest pick will still be football because i have been around it for a long time to know the strength and weaknesses of different teams.

You are very correct, having knowledge for clubs perfectly it gives one a better idea of what sports look like , understanding a sports very well keep one really focus on how to look out before drawing any conclusion of betting. Football games is the easiest part because I have always followed sports long term now and I already familiar how to differentiate teams can perform or deliver in terms of betting and I know some of the team what they are capable of doing.

[noorman0]

-snip-
IMO it's not actually which sport can be ‘objectively’ easier to predict, it's just how well you know the patterns and context of it. An individual who was raised on baseball or cricket would probably say the same about their sport.

I think the OP is simply asking about favorite sports for betting, assuming that making predictions is a requirement in sports betting. In reality, one can place bets on matches without making predictions or having a specific favorite sport, and still have a chance of winning. Luck doesn't care whether or not a bettor makes a prediction beforehand.

[Yablee0]

which one do you personally find easiest to predict and do you think that is because the sport is actually more predictable or it is simply because you understand it much better!!!

Normally football games are easily predicted due to how wide it has spread and how common it is. For me, no other games I love doing than sports betting, why because the passion is already there from the root. Just like op earlier said, we Nigerians we barely grow up without involving our self in one football team or the other , that's our Passion. And for this reason predicting a match become more easier because it's something we have been doing for several years now. However, if I'm to choose first five best sports games of my choice, I will just keep on choosing football over and over again because that is just my passion.

[SFR10]

For those who have followed different sports over the years. Out of football, tennis, NBA, Swimming, golf, horse racing, wrestling, Car Racing, Hockey and other modern sports, which one do you personally find easiest to predict and do you think that is because the sport is actually more predictable or it is simply because you understand it much better!!!

I also grew up around football, but despite understanding it very well and placing almost all of my bets on this sport, I think the easiest sports to predict out of the ones you mentioned yesterday are those that could also count as an individual sport ^{[e.g., Tennis, Swimming, Gold and Wrestling]} since fewer things can influence the result.

[Cyber_warrior]

My obvious choice is football, because I have followed football from my childhood days and coming from a country like Nigeria it is almost impossible not to grow up around the game. You will see people playing it everywhere you watch it on television, you discuss it with friends and families and with time you naturally become very familiar with the teams, players, competitions and how the game works.

But now I feel that familiarity from early stages is what makes football feel easier to predict for me or is it that football is actually easier compared to other sports. Some of us don't have the same exposure to all this professional sports like the NBA, tennis, golf, cricket, horse racing, Swimming, Car Racing or even wrestling. Some of these sports are not things you see physically around you on a regular basis, like our first real exposure to some of them was through television or in some cases, by going online to understand the rules and how the sport is actually played.

Someone who grew up watching basketball every day, for example will naturally find NBA games much easier to understand and predict than football and someone who has followed tennis for years might also say the same about tennis.

For those who have followed different sports over the years. Out of football, tennis, NBA, Swimming, golf, horse racing, wrestling, Car Racing, Hockey and other modern sports, which one do you personally find easiest to predict and do you think that is because the sport is actually more predictable or it is simply because you understand it much better!!!

Rather than football which is much more popular and easily accessible in many Communities, Societies and Nations, and obviously the easiest to predict amongst all the sport being played all around the world, also being one of the most participated and loved sport of all time. Wrestling in my community is the next sport in line which can be easily predictable to me and most because, wrestling has become part of our leaving as a child in my community.

Most individuals around my community from their child wood would easily mention or list almost all wrestlers and their entrance celebrations, signs and sounds, it easy for most people in my Community and society whether children or adults to gladly tell you the most likely to win among wrestlers even before the beginning of a wrestling match which is likely to happen. That is my opinion about the most likely predicted sports among all sports

[eisen33]

I don't think there's anything easier or harder, but I can say for sure that you should only bet on sports you understand well. If it's tennis, I'll only bet on players I follow, if it's football it'll only be the championships and matches I watch. But if you bet on teams or players I don't know, it's just a game of luck, and I think your chances of winning are significantly reduced, even if you bet on the favorites.

[Nrcewker]

which one do you personally find easiest to predict and do you think that is because the sport is actually more predictable or it is simply because you understand it much better!!!

No sport is easier to predict. That’s the beauty of sports that is anything and everything can happen until the last minute. The thing that helps you predict the outcome is your own love for the sport.

I personally feel that cricket and table tennis are the sports I can predict most easily. Though these games are not mentioned exclusively in the OP, I believe they are modern sports and quite popular. I play both of these sports myself so I know when the momentum shifts from one team to another.

Hence if you look at my bets on any sportsbook, they are almost always on cricket and TT matches. I like soccer too, but it’s really hard to predict those matches.

[Ishicryptic]

For those who have followed different sports over the years. Out of football, tennis, NBA, Swimming, golf, horse racing, wrestling, Car Racing, Hockey and other modern sports, which one do you personally find easiest to predict and do you think that is because the sport is actually more predictable or it is simply because you understand it much better!!!

I don't think that any sports is too easy to predict and why I say this is that a lot of bettors would troop into the sports and learn their stats whether they like the game or not, from my observation I don't think there is any sport like that which for me means that there is no sport that is very easy to predict. The sport that you're interested in might seem like it is easier to predict than other sports but if you're not constantly winning it means that it is not very easy for you to predict despite loving the game, only constant winnings in a sports that will guarantee that it is easy for you to predict. Luck plays a predominant role in sports bet, despite your love for a sport and how much you understand the stats you still need luck to win because events can change your prediction during a game and you can lose despite how sure you are.

I'm not very familiar with track and field but I think that it might be the easiest to predict because it is an individual sport where only strength and perseverance determines winners and over time we can easily know the athletes that have the most strength to win. I might be wrong.