The wisdom of amateur crowds: evidence from an online community of sports tipsters

Brown, A. and Reade, J. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8610-530X (2019) The wisdom of amateur crowds: evidence from an online community of sports tipsters. European Journal of Operational Research, 272 (3). pp. 1073-1081. ISSN 0377-2217 doi: 10.1016/j.ejor.2018.07.015

Abstract/Summary

We analyse the accuracy of crowd forecasts produced on Oddsportal, an online community of amateur sports tipsters. Tipsters in this community are ranked according to the betting return on their tips, but there are no prizes for accuracy. Nevertheless, we find that aggregated tips in this community contain information not in betting prices. A strategy of betting when a majority predict an outcome produces average returns of 1.317% for 68,339 events. The accuracy of these forecasts stems from the wisdom of the whole crowd, as selecting sections of the crowd based on experience or past forecast accuracy does not improve betting returns.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/78439
Identification Number/DOI	10.1016/j.ejor.2018.07.015
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Politics, Economics and International Relations > Economics
Publisher	Elsevier
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