Forecasting the Professional Team Sporting Events: Evidence from Euro 2000 and 2004 Football Tournaments

This study aims at predicting the most likely winners of international football tournaments. To this end, this paper employs a relatively simple statistical method, which is based on the seasonal coefficients of variation (CVs) of the end-of-season points from domestic football leagues to measure the degree of competitive balance and to use it as a comparative indicator between the contesting countries in international football tournaments. The seasonal CV values computed from over ten seasons of the top division final standings of participating countries of Euro 2000 and 2004 football tournaments were utilized to predict the outcome of these football tournaments. The results based on the short, mid and long-term seasonal CV values suggest that this forecasting approach provides significantly reliable results in the case of Euro 2000 but not in the case of Euro 2004.