The Effect of Weather in Soccer Results: An Approach Using Machine Learning Techniques

Abstract

The growing popularity of soccer has led to the prediction of match results becoming of interest to the research community. The aim of this research is to detect the effects of weather on the result of matches by implementing Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, K-Nearest Neighbors Algorithm, and Extremely Randomized Trees Classifier. The analysis was executed using the Spanish La Liga and Segunda division from the seasons 2013–2014 to 2017–2018 in combination with weather data. Two tasks were proposed as part of this study: the first was to find out whether the game will end in a draw, a win by the hosts or a victory by the guests, and the second was to determine whether the match will end in a draw or if one of the teams will win. The results show that, for the first task, Extremely Randomized Trees Classifier is a better method, with an accuracy of 65.9%, and, for the second task, Support Vector Machine yielded better results with an accuracy of 79.3%. Moreover, it is possible to predict whether the game will end in a draw or not with 0.85 AUC-ROC. Additionally, for comparative purposes, the analysis was also performed without weather data.