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When a WWE pay-per-view (PPV) event is on the horizon, the staff of Cageside Seats usually 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.
Six different staff members predicted the winners for the matches that took place at TLC (Sun., Dec. 16, 2018) from the SAP Center in San Jose, California. 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 TLC 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, the number "0" is an incorrect prediction, and empty spaces indicate that no prediction data was available. 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 Rey Mysterio’s match can be interpreted as follows: “6 out of 7 predictions for Mysterio’s match were correct, which is a predictability rating of 85.7%.”
Staff Predictions for TLC 2018
| Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Match | Geno | Sean | Cain | Claire | Kyle | Stella | Polls | Total |
| Murphy vs. Alexander | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 85.7 |
| Elias vs. Lashley | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 57.1 |
| Fabulous Truth vs. Mahalicia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 57.1 |
| The Bar vs. New Day vs. Usos | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 14.3 |
| Strowman vs. Corbin | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 71.4 |
| Natalya vs. Riott | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 85.7 |
| Balor vs. McIntyre | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14.3 |
| Mysterio vs. Orton | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 85.7 |
| Rousey vs. Jax | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 100.0 |
| Bryan vs. Styles | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 85.7 |
| Rollins vs. Ambrose | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 85.7 |
| Lynch vs. Flair vs. Asuka | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 57.1 |
| Total | 58.3 | 50.0 | 66.7 | 75.0 | 83.3 | 50.0 | 83.3 | 66.7 |
These numbers add up to 56 correct predictions and 28 incorrect predictions, which means the overall predictability rating for TLC is 66.7%.
This increases the overall predictability rating for 2018 WWE PPVs from 57.8% up to 58.7% (475 correct versus 334 incorrect predictions). For comparison's sake, the overall predictability rating for 2015 WWE PPVs was 63.4%, in 2016 it was 61.1%, and in 2017 it was 61.6%.
One thing that stands out from these results is that eight of the 12 matches had a predictability rating of higher than 85% or lower than 15%, so there weren’t a ton of matches that fell into that medium range of predictability.
The staff of Cageside Seats had a good night with predicting the winners at TLC. How did you fare, Cagesiders?