Today’s England vs. Wales game will divide pubs and living rooms across the UK, but an analysis of data from Tumblr and Yahoo Sport predicts a 2-1 victory for England.
While many pundits touted England for the win last Saturday, research scientists at Yahoo and Tumblr predicted the 1-1 result at the Stade Vélodrome, thanks to a combination of team performance data and the wisdom of millions of football fans online.
Though some fans might feel deflated following the weekend’s draw against Russia, England are forecast to come top of Group B, according to Yahoo and Tumblr predictions.
By analysing 24 million blogs – with over 20 billion Tumblr posts over the first five months of 2016 – and combining with Yahoo Sport data, Yahoo and Tumblr have already predicted the full set of results for the tournament.
Ian Nolan, Head of Yahoo Sport, commented: “We gave traditional data-driven score line predictions a twist by using insight drawn from Tumblr users’ social signals and they’ve proved more accurate than many of the professional pundits so far. This just goes to show how powerful big data can be – in this case Yahoo Sports’ data and the voices of millions of passionate Tumblr fan bloggers. Pundits and analysts may know a lot, but it seems that you cannot ignore the wisdom of crowds!”
Yahoo predicts England will make it all the way to the semis, even overcoming Portugal in the quarter finals. The full methodology and list of Euro 2016 predictions can be found here.