30 Years of MLS Elo Ratings, Updated After Every Match Day
A free, CC-licensed dataset covering every MLS regular-season and playoff match since 1996 — pre-match and post-match Elo ratings for both teams in a single CSV.
- LinkLoot access
- Free
- Provider costs
- Unknown
What you get from it
What it does
The philo92/mls-elo repository publishes historical and current Elo ratings for Major League Soccer, covering every regular-season and playoff match from the league's inaugural 1996 season to today. Three CSV files form the dataset: results.csv lists each match with pre-match and post-match Elo ratings for both teams, full-time scores, outcomes, and neutral-venue flags; teams.csv holds each club's current rating and last update date; and home_advantage.csv tracks the home-field advantage parameter used in the model.
The methodology follows standard football Elo conventions: every team starts at 1,500, all matches carry equal weight (no bonus for playoffs or rivalries), and margin-of-victory adjustments reward larger goal differences. Only MLS league matches are included — cup competitions like the U.S. Open Cup and continental tournaments such as the CONCACAF Champions Cup are excluded. Team names are unified to each club's current name throughout, so 1990s MetroStars matches appear under New York Red Bulls, keeping a franchise's full history trackable under one identifier.
Two-legged playoff rounds from 2003–2018 are combined into single aggregate results treated as neutral-site matches. Extra-time scores appear in some historical records, but going forward updates use only regulation-time results.
Who it helps
This is a source-of-truth dataset for anyone building MLS analytics, prediction models, or content that needs consistent power ratings across three decades of play. The project fills a gap left by ClubElo, which covers European leagues but not MLS. It also feeds oddsline.io, a football betting analytics platform run by the same solo developer, so the data is battle-tested against real modeling work.
Getting started
Clone or download the repository directly from GitHub. No API keys, dependencies, or build steps are required — the data ships as plain CSV files ready for pandas, R, spreadsheets, or any tool that reads delimited text. Ratings are updated manually after MLS match days on a best-effort basis, typically staying current within a few days of each round.
Limits and costs
The dataset is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, which permits commercial and non-commercial reuse provided you credit the source. Hosting and access are free through the public GitHub repository. Key limitations: no cup or continental competition coverage, equal weighting across all match types, and manual updates rather than automated pipelines, so freshness depends on the maintainer's schedule. Historical extra-time scores may inflate margins compared to the regulation-only policy now in place.
Source links
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