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Evidence of a Reduced Home Advantage when a Team Moves to a New Stadium
Abstract and Figures
Home advantage is well documented for professional baseball, basketball and ice hockey in North America. One of the possible causes of this advantage is familiarity with the local playing facility. This was investigated and quantified in an analysis of 37 teams moving to new stadiums, but in the same city, from 1987 to 2001. Home advantage during the first season in a new stadium after the move was significantly less than home advantage in the final season in the old stadium (P= 0.011). The reduction was evident in all three sports. Possible confounding factors, such as crowd size and crowd density, were considered but did not appear to have an effect. It is estimated that about 24% of the advantage of playing at home maybe lost when a team relocates to a new facility.
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... On the other hand, evidence suggests that there is a "home court" effect in professional basketball matches. (Schwartz and Barsky, 1977;Pollard, 2003). This home court advantage is due to the atmosphere created by the audience, the stadium's level of reception, and the severity of the referees' penalties (Carron et al., 2005). ...
... According to Pollard, the familiarity aspect may reflect up to 24% of the HA (Pollard, 1986). The aspect of familiarity with the location allows greater spatial awareness of the athlete of the local team, which allows a better orientation in the technicaltactical actions of the games (Courneya& Carron, 1992; Nevill& Holder, 1999; Pollard, 2002). ...
The aim of the study was to explore the opinion of expert volleyball coaches in high-performance regarding the home advantage effect (playing at home or away) and differences in relation to player's gender (male/female). Materials and Methods: Seven experienced coaches were interviewed analysing and discussing the content of the interviewees' speech. The interview information was coded, compared and grouped by similarity of meaning. Results:According to the analysis of the coaches' interviews, there is a greater preference for games played as principals than as the visiting team, since at home there is a greater familiarity of the players with the reference points of the court, as well as the social context involved (among the most cited sleep quality, adequate food, family support, or fans' support). Conclusion: Based on the results, important information regarding the context of game location was identified and can be implemented in the competition preparation.
... Regarding the causes of home advantage, several potential reasons have been proposed over the years, including the following: crowd support (Agnew & Carron, 1994;Nevill & Holder, 1999;Pollard, 2006a), travel fatigue (Nevill & Holder, 1999;Pace & Carron, 1992;Pollard, 2006a), familiarity (Barnett & Hilditch, 1993;Pollard, 1986;Pollard, 2002), referee bias (Nevill & Holder, 1999;Garicano et al., 2005;Buraimo et al., 2010), territoriality (Neave & Wolfson, 2003;Pollard, 2006b), special tactics (Seckin & Pollard, 2008;Carmichael & Thomas, 2005), rule factors (Jacklin, 2005;Thomas et al., 2004), and psychological factors (Terry et al., 1998;Thout et al., 1998). For detailed explanations, we refer the reader to reviews that summarize these articles that examine the potential causes (e.g., Legaz-Arrese et al., 2013;Nevill & Holder, 1999;Pollard, 2008). ...
This paper examines the effect of spectators on women’s football games. COVID-19 and related restrictions provide a unique opportunity with an adequate sample size to test the effect of lockdown on sports activities. Studies have recently exploited this opportunity for men’s football to better understand the potential causes of home advantage and, more specifically, assess the psychological consequences when matches are played without supporters. Despite the increased scientific interest, there was only one paper that focused on women’s football. Therefore, we aim to contribute to this research field by considering matches from four major European women’s football leagues. The findings suggest that for three of these leagues, lockdown has a statistically significant effect on the sanctioned yellow cards by either reducing the number of yellow cards sanctioned to the away teams or increasing the number of yellow cards sanctioned to the home teams. Nonetheless, lockdown does not affect any final match outcomes; therefore, it does not significantly affect the magnitude of home advantage for women’s games.
... Despite robust evidence of its existence, home advantage remains of interest to the contemporary research field, with numerous studies published every year (e.g., Dawson et al., 2020;Fischer & Haucap, 2021;Graham et al., 2022;Harris et al., 2019;Higgs & Stavness, 2021;Hill & Van Yperen, 2021;McEwan, 2019;Sors et al., 2021). Various drivers of home advantage have been identified, including partisan crowds (Anders & Rotthoff, 2014;Bryson et al., 2021;Nevill et al., 2002;Schwartz & Barsky, 1977), venue familiarity (Loughead et al., 2003;Pollard, 2002), and travel-related fatigue and circadian misalignment (Leatherwood & Dragoo, 2013;Leota et al., 2022;McHill & Chinoy, 2020;Recht et al., 1995;Song et al., 2017). Despite growing literature in this area, the extent to which these individual drivers contribute to home team success remains a matter of debate (Carron et al., 2005;Fischer & Haucap, 2021;Huyghe et al., 2021). ...
Studies have consistently shown crowds contribute to home advantage in the National Basketball Association (NBA) by inspiring home team effort, distracting opponents, and influencing referees. Quantifying the effect of crowds is challenging, however, due to potential co-occurring drivers of home advantage (e.g., travel, location familiarity). Our aim was to isolate the crowd effect using a “natural experiment” created by the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which eliminated crowds in 53.4% of 2020/2021 NBA regular season games (N = 1080). Using mixed linear models, we show, in games with crowds, home teams won 58.65% of games and, on average, outrebounded and outscored their opponents. This was a significant improvement compared to games without crowds, of which home teams won 50.60% of games and, on average, failed to outrebound or outscore their opponents. Further, the crowd-related increase in rebound differential mediated the relationship between crowds and points differential. Taken together, these results suggest home advantage in the 2020/2021 NBA season was predominately driven by the presence of home crowds and their influence on the effort exerted to rebound the basketball. These findings are of considerable significance to a league where marginal gains can have immense competitive, financial, and historic consequences.
... Home advantage phenomenon can be attributed to several possible features, such as positive psychological states during home games (Terry et al., 1998) or familiarity with facility (Pollard, 2002). However, it has been found that in situations that do not involve subjective decision making of referees, home athletes perform worse. ...
Home advantage is a well-established phenomenon in professional football. However, the literature on the effect of the size of the crowd on home advantage has produced mixed results. The present study utilized data from all the games in the Chinese Super League between the 2011 and 2019 seasons. Using multivariate regression, where we control for teams' abilities, different schedule related variables and referees' unobserved characteristics, we find that the size of attendance has a positive effect on home advantage in terms of yellow cards, scored goals and points per game. Our finding emphasizes the important role of crowd on home advantage, not only for the dichotomous comparison between games with and without crowd, but also for the continuous case with varying levels of crowd.
... Since basketball is a sport that is played indoors, the outside weather has no influence on the player and team performance. Although the weather is not considered to be a factor that affects home team performance in basketball, other factors such as home court familiarity (Pollard, 2002;Yi, 2017), travel distance (Boudreaux et al., 2017;Yi, 2017), fatigue (Ashman et al., 2010;Entine & Small, 2008), psychology (Bray & Widmeyer, 2000;Bray, Jones, & Owen, 2002), style of play (Harris & Roebber, 2019), human bias (Anderson & Pierce, 2009;Sutter & Kocher, 2004;van Bommel et al., 2021), and crowd support (Agnew & Carron, 1994;Gobikas et al., 2020: Harris & Roebber, 2019: Smith, 2003van Bommel et al., 2021) have all been identified as possible contributing factors to the advantage at home. Each of the mentioned factors has been examined to one degree or another in men's basketball, both at the college level and professional level. ...
p>The home team advantage has been extensively documented and studied in many team sports, especially men’s basketball leagues. In contrast, research that has examined the home court advantage in women’s basketball leagues could not be found. Therefore, this study was designed to answer the following questions: (1) is the home court advantage present in the woman’s national basketball association (WNBA)? (2) is there a relationship between crowd density and referee bias in favor of the home team in the national woman’s basketball league? (3) is there a relationship between crowd density and home team performance in the woman’s national basketball league? The study at hand employed a longitudinal study approach to examine 5 regular seasons (2015-2019) of 10 WNBA teams. Data for fan attendance, sport arena capacity, and box scores were collected from public domains. Statistical calculations and analysis were used to compare chosen box scores between the home team and away team. Similarly, chosen box scores were compared between home games that had a crowd density above 50% and home games that had a crowd density below 50%. The results of this study showed that the home court advantage was present in the woman’s national basketball league. In contrast to research studies that examined referee bias in men’s basketball leagues, the results of this study are conflicting and inconclusive. However, home games that had crowd density above 50% significantly outperformed home games that had crowed density below 50%, both offensively (p=0.003) and defensively (p=0.002).
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... Ev sahibi takım oyuncuları genellikle sahanın boyutları, oyun zemini ve diğer fiziksel özellikler açısından kendi sahalarına daha alışıktır ve daha tanıdık bir ortamda kendilerine güvenerek oyun performansı gösterirler (Ponzo ve Scoppa, 2018). Bir takım yeni bir stadyuma taşındığında oyun koşullarına alışkanlık kaybolacağı için ev sahibi takım avantajının azaldığını gösteren çalışmalar (Pollard, 2002) olduğu gibi, yeni bir sahaya geçtikten sonra ev sahibi avantajının değişmediğini belirten çalışmalarda söz konusudur (Loughead, 2003). ...
Futbolda ev sahibi takım avantajı iyi bilinen ve maçların sonuçlarını belirleyen önemli bir konudur. Pek çok farklı ligde ev sahibi avantajını etkileyen faktörler kapsamlı bir şekilde incelenmesine rağmen, konu Türkiye’de yeterli ilgiyi görememiştir. Çalışmada TFF Süper Lig’de maç katılım düzeyinin ev sahibi avantajı üzerindeki etkisi değerlendirilmektedir. Tek aşamalı en küçük kareler modelinde pazartesi günü ve derbi maçlarının seyirci sayısını anlamlı bir şekilde etkilediği sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Daha sonra bu iki etki araç değişken olarak iki aşamalı en küçük kareler modeline dahil edilmiştir. Sonuçlar maç katılımındaki içsel artışların ev sahibi avantajını azaltan etkilere sahip olduğunu göstermektedir. Dolayısıyla fikstür hazırlanırken ilgili kurumların hafta içi maçlarına daha az yer vermesi kulüpler arasında olumsuz etkilenen rekabetçi dengenin düzelmesi ve gelir kayıplarının telafi edilmesine katkı sağlayacaktır.
The home advantage in sports is an important issue that has been researched for a long time. In this research, the home advantage of the Turkish Men Handball Super League during the five seasons (2015/2016-2019/2020) was evaluated. In the research, the analysis of variables such as the number of match wins of the home teams and the home advantage according to the seasons were made. In a total of 647 matches played in the five seasons of the Turkish Handball Super League, the home teams won 325 (50.23%) and lost 269 matches (41.57%). The advantage of being the home team in the Handball Super League in five seasons was determined as 53.46%. It is thought that the home advantage is an important factor in sports competitions. It can be said that the good use of the home advantage is a significant factor for the success of a team in the handball branch. It is thought that this situation should be taken into account in the trainings to be made in handball and it can have a significant impact on the success of the team.
Our aim was to explore the possible effect of home-audience advantage (HAA) on the most important basketball game-related statistical indexes of team technical performance (TPIs) during the last two regular seasons (2019-21) with an audience and with no audience. The TPIs (e.g., Points, Rebounds, Fouls) derived from the same 17 teams and 112 games that took place in each season based on predefined inclusion-exclusion criteria and provided by EuroLeague's official site. The home teams won significantly more games with an audience (69) in comparison to away teams (43), whereas with no audience they did not. In the season 2019-20 the home advantage was 61.60%, 4.46% of which corresponds to HAA. Most TPIs were not affected by the presence or absence of an audience and were not different between home and away teams. However, home teams with an audience committed significantly fewer Turnovers (11.92±1.95) in comparison to home teams without an audience (13.33±1.26). It seems that HAA has a strong effect on winning frequency and on reducing Turnovers of home teams. This knowledge of the teams' performance may help teams' personnel, psychologists, and coaches to develop proper game strategies, training and mental practices which may further improve the teams' technical performance.
The existence of home advantage has been established for all major professional team sports in England and North America. The advantage was found to be greatest in soccer, with the home team currently obtaining about 64% of all points gained in the English Football League. Home advantage has changed very little since the formation of the League in 1888 and there are only small variations between the four Divisions of the League. The advantage is less marked in local derbies, in the FA Cup and in nonprofessional competitions. It is greater in the European Cup and increases as the stages of the competition progress. The allocation of three points, instead of two, for a win in the Football League has not changed home advantage, but its effect has been greatly reduced in the GM Vauxhall Conference where an away win gains more points than a home win. The statistical evidence suggests that crowd support and travel fatigue contribute less to home advantage in soccer than do the less easily quantifiable benefits of familiarity with conditions when playing at home. Further possible explanations for the advantage are discussed in the light of findings in other sports.
This review identifies the most likely causes of home advantage. The results of previous studies have identified 4 factors thought to be responsible for the home advantage. These can be categorised under the general headings of crowd, learning, travel and rule factors. From the accumulated evidence, rule factors were found to play only a minor role (in a limited number of sports) in contributing to home advantage. Studies investigating the effect of learning factors found that little benefit was to be gained from being familiar with the local conditions when playing at home. There was evidence to suggest that travel factors were responsible for part of the home advantage, provided the journey involved crossing a number of time zones. However, since high levels of home advantage are observed within countries where travel distances are not great. travel factors were not thought to be a major cause of home advantage. The evidence from studies investigating crowd factors appeared to provide the most dominant causes of home advantage. A number of studies provide strong evidence that home advantage increases with crowd size, until the crowd reaches a certain size or consistency (a more balanced number of home and away supporters), after which a peak in home advantage is observed. Two possible mechanisms were proposed to explain these observations: either (i) the crowd is able to raise the performance of the home competitors relative to the away competitors; or (ii) the crowd is able to influence the officials to subconsciously favour the home team. The literature supports the latter to be the most important and dominant explanation. Clearly, it only takes 2 or 3 crucial decisions to go against the away team or in favour of the home team to give the side playing at home the 'edge'.
We obtained indices of home advantage, based on the medals won by competing nations, for each event held at the Winter Olympics from 1908 to 1998. These indices were designed to assess home advantage while controlling for nation strength, changes in the number of medals on offer and the performance of 'non-hosting' nations. Some evidence of home advantage was found in figure skating, freestyle skiing, ski jumping, alpine skiing and short track speed skating. In contrast, little or no home advantage was observed in ice hockey, Nordic combined, Nordic skiing, bobsled, luge, biathlon or speed skating. When all events were combined, a significant home advantage was observed (P = 0.029), although no significant differences in the extent of home advantage were found between events (P > 0.05). When events were grouped according to whether they were subjectively assessed by judges, significantly greater home advantage was observed in the subjectively assessed events (P = 0.037). This was a reflection of better home performances, suggesting that judges were scoring home competitors disproportionately higher than away competitors. Familiarity with local conditions was shown to have some effect, particularly in alpine skiing, although the bobsled and luge showed little or no advantage over other events. Regression analysis showed that the number of time zones and direction of travel produced no discernible trends or differences in performance.
A home advantage in sport competitions has been well documented. The strength and consistency of the home advantage has made it a popular phenomenon in sport today. Very little systematic research has been carried out, however, and the home advantage remains one of the least understood phenomena in sport. It appears that much of the game location research has been arbitrary, and a clear sense of direction is lacking. The purpose of the present paper is to provide a conceptual framework to organize a comprehensive review of previous game location research and provide direction for future research. The review of literature indicated that the descriptive phase of inquiry has been completed, and it is time to address the underlying mechanisms responsible for the manifestation of the home advantage. Possible methodologies and areas of inquiry are highlighted and discussed.
Four teams in the four divisions of the English Football League have been playing their home matches on artificial pitch surfaces at certain times over the last 10 years or so. A Commission of Enquiry (Football League, 1989) recently recommended that the introduction of further artificial pitches be restricted. One of the factors leading to this recommendation was the possible advantage gained by the home team on such pitches. A statistical analysis of the end-of-season results for the four divisions over the last 10 years (carried out for the Football League) showed that there is indeed such an advantage and that it is of a sufficient scale to be a cause for concern.
Least squares is used to fit a model to the individual match results in English football and to produce a home ground advantage effect for each team in addition to a team rating. We show that for a balanced competition this is equivalent to a simple calculator method using only data from the final ladder. The existence of a spurious home advantage is discussed. Home advantages for all teams in the English Football League from 1981-82 to 1990-91 are calculated, and some reasons for their differences investigated. A paired home advantage is defined and shown to be linearly related to the distance between club grounds.
In major sports events between representatives of different cities, the home team has been known to have a major advantage over the visiting team. Drawing on Durkheim, Schwartz and Barsky (1977) have demonstrated that the social support of the audience is the main determinant of this advantage. In their conclusion, Schwartz and Barsky characterize sports events as a “celebration of local community”(p. 658). This article tests the celebration of community thesis by comparing the relative home advantage among 23 professional basketball teams during the 1981–82 season. Three broad variables are hypothesized to affect a team's home court advantage: (1) provincialism and stability of the city; (2) uniqueness of the home arena; and (3) the tradition of the team. Support is found for all three variables. Not only is there a home advantage in organized sports, but the magnitude of the advantage is itself bound by the social context within which the team performs.