On February 27th Dr. Ken Liao presented his ongoing research on how to predict players worth in Fantasy Football. While this research omits rookies, Dr. Liao has formulated a theory to predict the true value of a player and their possible capabilities in the upcoming year based on previous data. In May 2018 The Supreme Court ruled that states can legalize sports betting. This opened up an eight billion dollar industry for sixty million consumers in the United States and Canada.
He opened his presentation by explaining the various platforms and different structure fantasy football can take on. There are two main types of Fantasy Football. The more traditional style is a season-long structure where participants engage during the length of the NFL season. The other is Daily Fantasy which is an accelerated version where bets are places over a shorter period of time. ESPN, Yahoo!, and Fox Sports are a few arenas where you can participate in season-long fantasy settings where DraftKings and FanDuel are the places to go if you are looking for a daily fantasy experience.
How are players' values calculated you may ask? Well, it currently is assessed by a board of Sports analysts hired by ESPN. They make deduction by how the players have previously preformed and make a prediction about how beneficial they will be on the roster for the new season. With this, they assign a price tag. Dr. Liao's research is not based on predictions but a testing method that can presumably be more accurate than the current handful of sports analysts that most of the industry follows.
In Dr. Liao's model, he initially aggregates various data. These creditable sources
range from NFF game statistics scrapped from NFL's API and ESPN recommended action
prices. He also works with NFL draft data, team statistics, and player characteristics
pulled from well-respected
websites. With this, he finds the Dr. Liao presenting at our Spring Research Colloquia.
points earned in previous years and divides that by the estimated price of the player.
The solution gives a true predicted value of the players' potential in the upcoming
NFL season.
This method can eradicate the "hype" over a player that is actually underperforming and in the same respect, it can possibly highlight a dark horse that statistically is projected to have a great upcoming season. Regardless if the player is on a good or bad NFL team, in this method, it has no significant effect on the true value of the individual player. This approach can also stabilize bias and media perception that may overshadow some sport analyst predictions. Ultimately, Dr. Liao's aim is to predict if the official published prices released by the analysts is an accurate prediction of the individual player's true value. In order to produce the most profit when participating in Fantasy Football and sports betting.
Dr. Liao has concluded that typically quarterbacks are overvalued and tight ends are
undervalued due to their positions and roster requirements. Participants are only
allowed to have one quarterback on your roster while you must have a minimum of one
tight end on your roster. There are a lot of good quarterbacks and few good tight
tend to bring in enough points to justify their fantasy price tag.
However, running backs and wide receivers have more stable predictions and can bring
in "more points per dollar" in each respective fantasy league. Meaning if you purchase
a player for twenty auction dollars and they go on to deliver over 350 points scored
in the season they have outperformed their predicted price. Utilizing this information
during a Fantasy Football League can help a participant max out on the points earned
while capitalizing on the fantasy action dollars.
This economic perspective gives participants the ability to make more money in sports betting by being more selective on what poisons and individuals they chose to add to their roster.
Through Dr. Laio's research, he was able to create a method to more accurately predict the player's true value. Analyzing the actual data and synthesizing a method to aim to secure more points per fantasy dollar, allows participants to maximize their financial return. The sports betting industry is only growing in its financial profitability as more participants tune-in. Having a skillful approach can help your fantasy team climb to the top on the leader boards each week.