Who said Football Manager cannot be more than a game? Some people use its simulations to bet.
The creator of the Golden FM YouTube channel used the editor to recreate the groups of the 2018 World Cup in Russia and made the file available to everyone.
A thousand simulations, and reality confirmed it
After simulating the tournament 100 times, he asked his 45,000 followers to do the same and share the results. After a thousand simulations, France were by far the team that won most often, England finished fourth and Harry Kane was top scorer. All of this ended up happening in real life.
From fun to business
The idea started as a way to interact with the channel’s fans, but some took it in the direction of money.
Dave Matteo, an applied statistics student at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, was one of them. After 40 hours and 200 World Cup simulations, he bet $5 on each team the game predicted would win its group. Result: he finished with a 9.32% profit. And he thinks that, with better filtering of the results, the margin could have been bigger.
In his simulations too, France were champions and Kane won the Golden Boot, with goals that included the game against Panama, just as happened in reality.
Even so, Matteo admits the process is too time-consuming to guarantee consistent profits. Roy Rovers is much more confident: for him, no betting software simulates a game or a competition as well as Football Manager, thanks to the number of factors the match engine takes into account.
Would you trust FM to place a bet?
Read also
Fonte: Football Manager Blog