Additional analysis indicates that playing on one's home field rather than at a neutral site is worth about 3 points in football, 4.5 points in basketball, and 0.25 run in baseball. When they succeed, the proceeds from losing bets pay off the winning bets, with a small percentage going to the betting establishment. Oddsmakers' predictions generally prove to be a superior guide for identifying winning teams. Inbaseball, however, the oddsmakers do only slightly better than always picking the home team. Oddsmakers do somewhat better predicting basketball and football outcomes.
College games prove to be more predictable than professional contests in the same sport.
In effect, the methods provide an estimate of the ability of each team. In football, Stern's rudimentary statistical approach does nearly as well as the experts and considerably better than the strategy of always picking the home team, particularly when scores are used. A similar pattern occurs in the other sports. The answer depends on the sport. The best prediction approaches are just a bit better than using coin flips to predict.