Using Machine Learning and Candlestick Patterns to Predict the Outcomes of American Football Games

Match outcome prediction is a challenging problem that has led to the recent rise in machine learning being adopted and receiving significant interest from researchers in data science and sports. This study explores predictability in match outcomes using machine learning and candlestick charts, which have been used for stock market technical analysis. We compile candlestick charts based on betting market data and consider the character of the candlestick charts as features in our predictive model rather than the performance indicators used in the technical and tactical analysis in most studies. The predictions are investigated as two types of problems, namely, the classification of wins and losses and the regression of the winning/losing margin. Both are examined using various methods of machine learning, such as ensemble learning, support vector machines and neural networks. The effectiveness of our proposed approach is evaluated with a dataset of 13261 instances over 32 seasons in the National Football League. The results reveal that the random subspace method for regression achieves the best accuracy rate of 68.4%. The candlestick charts of betting market data can enable promising results of match outcome prediction based on pattern recognition by machine learning, without limitations regarding the specific knowledge required for various kinds of sports.