Ligue 1 Season Predictions 2024-25: Opta Predictions

Ligue 1 season predictions: quick hits

Title favorite: Paris Saint-Germain are on course to win their fourth consecutive Ligue 1 title.
Name: Dark Horse: Monaco is Paris Saint-Germain's biggest challenger.
Top 4 favorites: Paris Saint-Germain, Monaco and Lille, with Lens and Marseille vying for the final spot.
Relegation favorites: Angers are favorites to win the title, while Le Havre, St. Etienne and Nantes are also in trouble.

After hosting a great Olympics, club soccer is back in France.

After winning the title in each of the last three seasons, Paris Saint-Germain will open the 2024-25 season with a trip to Le Havre on Friday night, and the Opta supercomputer expects PSG to dominate that game and will dominate in Ligue 1 this season.

As with every year, we asked it to simulate the 2024-25 season 10,000 times and produce an average ranking based on the results. Unsurprisingly, the defending champions are the overwhelming favorites for another successful season, but the forecast expects the top flight to be very tight, with a number of contenders vying for Champions League qualification and relegation.

One thing to understand is that these predictions are based on what the Opta supercomputer knows today. So if all Ligue 1 matches were played right now, this is what the model would say about the end of the league. Of course, these predictions will change thousands of times throughout the season, depending on the real data that feeds into the season simulation. It doesn't take into account potential point deductions, long-term injuries to star strikers, and it certainly doesn't have a crystal ball for predicting managerial changes.

Nonetheless, these preseason projections give us a first look at what certain teams might realistically achieve in the 2024-25 season. You'll see a variety of 1-18 predictions from publications this summer, and you may have made your own; think of this as a more unique prediction, devoid of opinion and instead fueled by data.

So, without further delay, we'll take you through the key results of the current Opta Supercomputer Ligue 1 2024-25 simulation.

 Who will win the Ligue 1 title in the 2024-25 season?

Unless you've been living in a rut for the past decade, you wouldn't expect anything on this page other than a prediction that Paris Saint-Germain are the overwhelming favorites to win Ligue 1. In the 2023-24 season, the Opta supercomputer predicted PSG's pre-season title hopes to be 55.5%. they ended up winning the league by nine points. Now, a year on, the supercomputer is even more optimistic about Paris Saint-Germain's chances, with a projected probability of winning the title of 79.01 TP3T.

Of course, they'll have to do it without Kylian Mbappe, who left Paris for Real Madrid this summer, but they're still the overwhelming favorites to secure a fourth straight Ligue 1 title - only Lyon (seven between 2002 and 2008) has more consecutive wins in France.

The most likely challenge to Paris Saint-Germain's dominance comes from Monaco, who finished second last season and won the title in the 2024-25 season, which is the supercomputer's pre-season prediction of 8.1%.They last won the league title in the 2016-17 season - they had a certain of Mbappe - but will have to scrape by without striker Wissam Ben Yedder this season after his departure this summer. Nonetheless, they seem well-positioned to be Paris Saint-Germain's closest challengers again this season.

After finishing in the top two last season, Lille won the Ligue 1 title with a pre-season projection of 5.5% after finishing fourth in 2023-24, and they were the last team to win the league from the Parisians in 2020-21.

Outside of those three teams, Lens (1.7%), Marseille (1.4%), Nice (1.3%) and Lyon (1.1%) have won a total of 551 titles in 10,000 season simulations on the Opta supercomputer. Of these teams, Marseille have been the most active in the transfer market this summer and are hoping that the arrival of Roberto Di Zerbi from Brighton & Hove Albion may give them some stability, something they lacked last season.

Which team will qualify for the Champions League?

The top three clubs in Ligue 1 next season will automatically qualify for the Champions League, after a surprise podium finish at Brest last season. The Opta supercomputer gave them just 0.2% before kicking off the 2023-24 season, but now their chances of finishing in the top three again are 14.8%.

Will lightning strike twice? Well, based on this season's projections, the other seven clubs are more likely to finish in the top three spots at the end of the 2024-25 season.

Of course, Paris Saint-Germain is the most likely team to finish in the top three this season (97.0%), but the battle for second and third place looks to be the team to watch all season long. Monaco (54.3%) qualified for the UCL for the fourth consecutive season, while Lille have the next best projected chances of finishing in the top three (42.5%) despite finishing fourth in the 2023-24 season.

With the arrival of two respected coaches, Will Steele and De Zerbi, under new programs, a refreshed Lens (21.61 TP3T) and Marseille (18.61 TP3T) also have good chances of finishing in the top three, while Nice (17.21 TP3T) is slightly ahead of Lyon (15.11 TP3T) in the projections. Lyon ran into big trouble at the start of December last season, finishing bottom of the league after 14 games, five points behind 16th-placed Lorient. However, in their final 20 games of the 2023-24 season, they have earned more points than any other team in Ligue 1 (46), three more than title-winning Paris Saint-Germain (43) and six more than Monaco (40).

Rennes (12.91 TP3T) are the only team with more than a 31 TP3T chance of finishing in the top three in 2024-25, their worst league finish in five years after last season (10th).

Who will be relegated from Ligue 1 in the 2024-25 season?

There are two automatic relegation places in Ligue 1 this season, with a third possible via the relegation play-offs. Last season, Metz lost to Saint-Etienne in the play-offs and were relegated along with Clermont and Lorient.

Five clubs have come out on top in the pre-season Opta Supercomputer Predictions this season, each with at least a 30% chance of making it to the bottom two and into Ligue 2.

Unsurprisingly, there are two promoted teams in this group: Angers (44.2%), who spent just one season in Ligue 2 before returning to Ligue 1, and Saint-Etienne (37.4%), a historic club set to return to the top flight for the 2024-25 season. In between those two is Le Havre (38.8%), who survived last season despite being the overwhelming favorite to drop in preseason predictions (73.1%).

Auxerre also won promotion from Ligue 2 last season but find themselves the fifth most likely side to be relegated in the Opta supercomputer predictions (30.61 TP3T) behind Nantes (35.01 TP3T), who have finished in the bottom half of the table in five of the last six Ligue 1 seasons.

You might think that Strasbourg might not be relegated, with the Opta supercomputer predicting a 6.1% chance of finishing second from bottom this season, but Clermont were relegated last season despite the supercomputer predicting a pre-season chance of just 5.3%.

Opta-Simulated Ligue 1 2024-25 Scorecard

After simulating the 2024-25 season 10,000 times, we were able to rank the teams by averaging each club's point total across these simulations. Below are the results obtained by the Opta supercomputer from these simulations:

First:Paris Saint Germain - Averagetotal credits earned by student
73.3 Second place:Monaco - 60.8
Third place:Lille - 58.8
Fourth place:Lens - 54.6
Fifth place:Marseille - 54.0
Sixth place:Nice - 53.5
Seventh place:Lyon - 52.9
Eighth place:Brexit - 52.7
Ninth place:Rennes - 52.2
tenthName:Toulouse - 45.5
Tenth place:Montpellier - 44.5
No. 12 OrchidS - 43.2
13th place, StoutRasburg - 41.1
14th OuSearle - 33.4
15th place SouthSpecial - 32.6
16th St.Etienne - 32.2
17th place LeHavre - 31.9
18th place AngHeat - 31.0

How does the Opta supercomputer model work?

- Opta's league prediction model estimates the likelihood of a team finishing in each position in the competition. As a result, we can see how successful a team's season is likely to be, whether it's their chances of relegation or winning the title.

- The model estimates the probability of each game's outcome (win, draw or loss) by using betting market odds and Opta's power rankings. The odds and rankings are based on historical and recent team performance.

- The model uses these match result probabilities to take into account the strength of the opposition and simulates the remaining fixtures in the competition thousands of times. By analyzing the results of each simulation, the model can see how often a team finishes at the bottom of each league to make our final prediction.