How accurate are we?
Every forecast we make gets graded once the game ends. Here's how often we called the winner, and how close our predicted score margins came, in each sport.
How sure we were vs. how often we were right
Football
Before kickoff, our football forecast leads with the sportsbook line (DraftKings via ESPN, turned into a win chance with the bookmaker's cut removed), because in our tests lines called more winners than our own ratings. Our ratings blend Elo and schedule-adjusted scoring margin, using only games played before each game. Everything was tuned on 2018 to 2022 and checked on 2023 to 2025, seasons it never saw.
Every other sport last 30 days
Graded on every finished game from the last 30 days, using our own ratings before each game. ESPN removes sportsbook lines once a game ends, so these tiles can't grade the line; in the NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL, men's college basketball and the five big European soccer leagues, our live forecasts now lead with the line, which tested more accurate.
Does weather matter?
How to read this
Winners called is how often the team we gave the better chance won. Ties and draws are left out (in soccer, a draw counts as a miss unless we had it as the most likely result). Points off is how far our predicted final margin was from the real one, on average. When we were sure checks our confidence: when we said 80% or more, the favorite should win about 80% of those games or better. For reference, even the betting market's favorite wins only about two thirds of NFL games. Nobody gets close to 100%.