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Every time a WWE pay-per-view (PPV) event is on the horizon, the staff of Cageside Seats offers predictions for all of the advertised matches on the card. This data can be used to calculate a simple predictability rating for any event.
Five different staff members predicted the winners for the matches that took place at Battleground 2017 (Sun., July 23, 2017) from the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Staff members received credit for a correct prediction of the winner of any match, even if they were wrong about the context of that victory.
The Cageside Seats match preview articles for Battleground 2017 also offered polls allowing Cagesiders the chance to weigh in with their predictions.
The following chart contains the prediction results for every match. The leftmost column includes the full match list. Below each staff member's name, the number "1" is a correct prediction and the number "0" is an incorrect prediction. The rightmost column contains the overall predictability rating for every match, and the very last row shows the overall accuracy of each individual staff member.
The line for Sami Zayn’s match can be interpreted as follows: “2 out of 6 predictions for Zayn’s match were correct, which is a predictability rating of 33.3%.”
Staff Predictions for Battleground 2017
| Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Kyle | Rev | Polls | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Kyle | Rev | Polls | Total |
| Dillinger vs. English | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 33.3 |
| The Usos vs. New Day | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 50.0 |
| Nakamura vs. Corbin | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Fatal 5-Way Elimination Match | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Styles vs. Owens | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16.7 |
| Cena vs. Rusev | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Zayn vs. Kanellis | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 33.3 |
| Mahal vs. Orton | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| 75.0 | 62.5 | 37.5 | 37.5 | 75.0 | 37.5 | 54.2 |
These numbers add up to 26 correct predictions and 22 incorrect predictions, which means the overall predictability rating for Battleground 2017 is 54.2%.
This lowers the overall predictability rating for 2017 WWE PPVs from 57.9% down to 57.6% (245 correct versus 180 incorrect predictions). For comparison's sake, the overall predictability rating for 2015 WWE PPVs was 63.4% and the for 2016 PPVs it was 61.1%.
The staff of Cageside Seats didn’t have a great night with predicting the winners at Battleground 2017. How did you fare, Cagesiders?