Rate My Professor Ian McHale

Professor Ian McHale is Professor of Sports Analytics Strategy, International Business and Entrepreneurship in the School of Management at the University of Liverpool, part of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Mathematical Physics from the University of Liverpool and a PhD in Statistics from the University of Manchester. Previously, he was Reader in Business Analytics and Director of the Centre for Sports Business Research at the University of Salford. McHale founded the Royal Statistical Society's Statistics in Sport Section and serves as Associate Editor for the International Journal of Forecasting and the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sport. His research interests center on statistics in sport, including ranking methods, forecasting results in football, tennis, cricket, golf, and analysis of gambling markets and player behavior.

McHale's key publications include "A Bradley-Terry type model for forecasting tennis match results" (International Journal of Forecasting, 2011), "On the development of a soccer player performance rating system for the English Premier League" (Interfaces, 2012), "Plus-Minus Player Ratings for Soccer" (European Journal of Operational Research, 2020), "Forecasting football match results using a player rating based model" (International Journal of Forecasting, 2024), and "Gambling and wellbeing: Uneven gains and deficits across risk levels" (Social Science & Medicine, 2026). In 2005, he created the EA SPORTS Player Performance Indicator, the official player ratings system for the Barclays Premier League. He has consulted with the Premier League, football clubs, Press Association, Responsible Gambling Trust (GambleAware), General Medical Council, and bookmakers. The Sports Analytics Machine (SAM), developed by McHale, provides forecasts for Premier League and Championship matches featured on BBC Sport. He delivers courses on statistics, sports analytics, and forecasting, including the module Strategic Business Research for Sport, and supervises quantitative theses such as those on mixed martial arts forecasting.