UEFA EURO 2020 Forecast via Nested Zero-Inflated Generalized Poisson Regression

Abstract: This report is devoted to the forecast of the UEFA EURO 2020, Europe's continental football championship, taking place across Europe in June/July 2021. We present the simulation results for this tournament, where the simulations are based on a zero-inflated generalized Poisson regression model that includes the Elo points of the participating teams and the location of the matches as covariates and incorporates differences of team-specific skills. The proposed model allows predictions in terms of probabilities in order to quantify the chances for each team to reach a certain stage of the tournament. We use Monte Carlo simulations for estimating the outcome of each single match of the tournament, from which we are able to simulate the whole tournament itself. The model is fitted on all football games of the participating teams since 2014 weighted by date and importance.