Who says Football Manager can't be much more than a game?
Some people use the outcomes of their simulations to bet!
The host of the YouTube channel Golden FM used the editor to recreate the groups of the World Cup held in Russia and made the file publicly available to download.
1000 simulations later, reality confirmed the game
After simulating the tournament outcome 100 times, he asked his 45 thousand followers to simulate it too and post the results of their tests. Surprisingly, after 1000 simulations, France were by far the most successful team, England finished 4th and Harry Kane was the tournament's top scorer: predictions that matched reality.
From a joke to a business: the case of Dave Matteo
Although the simulation started as a bit of fun between the channel and its fans, some followers used the idea to make real money.
Dave Matteo, an applied statistics student at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, was one of those who tried his luck. After 40 hours of testing across 200 World Cup simulations, he decided to put 5 dollars on each team predicted to win the first round groups and ended up with a profit margin of 9.32%. Despite the gains, Dave believes better filtering of the results would have given him an even bigger margin.
In his simulations, once again France would end up champions and Harry Kane the Golden Boot, with the most goals in the tournament, including the game against Panama, just like in reality!
However, Matteo admits the simulation takes too long to guarantee consistent profits. On the other hand, Roy Rovers is much more confident in the method: for him, no betting software can simulate a game or competition as well as Football Manager, thanks to the many factors the match engine takes into account.
