KiqStat

A football prediction and betting-analysis platform built for the Nigerian market. Real fixtures, real live scores, and a statistical model fitted on actual completed matches — no placeholder games, no invented picks.

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What this is

Most football tipster sites hand you a selection and ask you to trust it. This one computes probabilities from a published method and shows you the sample size behind every number, including when that sample is too thin to say anything at all.

• Live scores across every competition the configured feeds carry.
• Fixtures up to 14 days out, kickoff times in West Africa Time.
• Predictions for 1X2, over/under, both-teams-to-score, double chance and correct score — all read off a single scoreline distribution, so they cannot contradict one another.
• Value detection that removes the bookmaker's margin before comparing prices, with capped Kelly staking guidance.
• Bet slip builder showing an accumulator's true combined probability, and warning when legs are correlated or the slip has grown long enough that the margin dominates.
• Model transparency on every match: fitted ratings, sample size, data quality and the parameters used.

Quick start

npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000. No API key is required — the app falls back to TheSportsDB's public key, which returns real live scores and real fixtures. See Data providers for lifting the coverage limits.

npm run build      # production build
npm test           # unit tests for the model, odds and staking maths
npm run lint
npm run smoke      # hit the live feeds and print what comes back

Data providers

Every fixture, scoreline and result comes from a live provider. Nothing is generated or seeded. Adapters are merged rather than ranked: the same fixture from two sources is de-duplicated on the club pair and kickoff day, the richer record wins, and gaps are filled from the other.

Provider	Env var	Coverage	Free tier
football-data.org	FOOTBALL_DATA_API_KEY	Top European competitions, untruncated result sets. Recommended.	10 req/min
API-Football	API_FOOTBALL_KEY	Widest coverage — the only one carrying NPFL and CAF properly	100 req/day
TheSportsDB	THESPORTSDB_API_KEY	Used automatically with the public key when nothing else is set	Public key caps list endpoints at a few rows

Copy .env.example to .env.local and fill in whichever you have. With none set, the app runs on the shared public key and says so in the interface — live scores stay complete, but fixture lists are capped upstream.

An optional ANTHROPIC_API_KEY upgrades the written match analysis from the deterministic generator to Claude. Claude is given the computed numbers and asked to explain them; it is never asked to predict anything, and the deterministic version is used whenever the call fails.

How the model works

For a fixture between home side i and away side j:

λ = exp(intercept + attack_i − defence_j + homeAdvantage)     home goals
μ = exp(intercept + attack_j − defence_i)                     away goals

Ratings are fitted by weighted maximum likelihood using a diagonal Newton step. The log-likelihood of a Poisson model with a log link is concave, and the L2 penalty makes it strictly concave, so the optimum is unique.

• Dixon-Coles correction. Pure Poisson understates 0-0, 1-0, 0-1 and 1-1, because teams play differently when a game is tight. The dependency parameter ρ is fitted alongside everything else.
• Recency weighting. Match weight halves roughly every six months, so current form outranks last season.
• Shrinkage. An L2 penalty pulls thinly-observed clubs toward league average, which stops a promoted side with three games played from getting an extreme rating off one fluke result.
• Identifiability. The intercept is a fitted parameter with both rating vectors centred. Pinning it instead forces the overall scoring level into the penalised defence ratings, and the home advantage collapses toward zero to compensate — there is a regression test for exactly this.
• Early season. When the current campaign has too few completed matches, the loader walks back through previous seasons until the sample is usable, trying both season-label conventions (2026-2027 and 2026).

The honesty gate

A prediction is only published as a pick when the history behind it supports one. Below 15 completed matches in the competition, or fewer than 3 appearances for either club, the model output is still shown — with an explicit warning — and no selection is offered. Fixtures in that state are listed separately on the predictions page rather than quietly mixed in.

What it cannot see

The model knows results. It does not know about suspensions, injuries, midweek fixture congestion or a waterlogged pitch. And a probability is not a forecast: a 65% home win will be wrong about one time in three, which is the model working correctly rather than failing.

Architecture

src/
  app/
    (app)/          live, fixtures, predictions, match/[id], trends, slip, content pages
    api/            live, fixtures, match/[id], trends, health
  components/
    landing/        hero, marquee, feature and pricing sections
    match/          cards, market panels, value calculator, slip
    ui/             design-system primitives
  lib/
    providers/      three adapters, resolver, TTL cache with request coalescing
    model/          the prediction engine — fitting, inference, pricing
    ai/             analyst with deterministic fallback
    service.ts      the seam the pages and API routes share

Provider responses are cached in-process with TTLs tuned to each feed's rate limit, and concurrent requests for the same key are coalesced so a cold cache under load produces one upstream call, not many.

Tests

npm test

Covers the scoreline distribution and its normalisation, the Dixon-Coles correction, market coherence (1X2 partitions the sample space; over and under are complementary at every line), recovery of known team strengths from simulated seasons, the score equations at convergence, margin removal, Kelly capping and accumulator maths.

Responsible gambling

Sports betting in Nigeria is regulated and restricted to adults 18 and over. This project is an analytics tool: it does not take bets or hold funds. Predictions are statistical estimates, not certainties.

Licence

Provided as-is. Match data belongs to the respective providers and is subject to their terms.