How do you predict a football score correctly?
Get the result right first, then the score. In our data 56.2% of predictions called the result but only 8.9% hit the exact score. Pick the side you think wins, and resist 2-1 as a default: low scores like 1-0 happen far more often than fans predict them.
What is the most common score in football?
In our sample of 5,617 completed matches from March to September 2026, the most common final score was 1-1 (9.6% of matches). 1-0 home wins were close behind.
Is it better to predict a draw?
Usually not. Draws are under-predicted as a crowd (21.4% of matches were drawn), but a draw is still the least likely of the three results in a single match, and the most accurate regular players in our data picked draws least.
Is predicting football just luck?
Not entirely. Among the 78 players with at least 30 predictions, the most accurate quarter called the result 63.3% of the time (3,415 of 5,396 predictions) and the least accurate 47.0% (1,741 of 3,702). Luck decides single matches; over dozens of calls, the gap between players is real.
How often do people predict the exact score?
8.9% of the time: 1,959 of 22,095 predictions in our study.