Animal Spirits in the Beautiful Game. Testing social pressure in professional football during the COVID-19 lockdown

Cueva, Carlos

doi:10.31219/osf.io/hczkj

Cited by 31 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In recent studies, the most important explanation for the home field advantage in soccer that is beginning to surface is the refereeing bias towards the home team (Pollard and Gómez, 2014;Bryson et al, 2020;Cueva, 2020;Dilger and Vischer 2020;Endrich and Gesche, 2020;McCarrick et al, 2020;Reade et al, 2020;Scoppa, 2020;Tilp and Thaller 2020). For example, Reade et al (2020) examined soccer matches played without spectators due to penalties for corruption or abusive behavior by the fans.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The current study aims to test the changes in the home field advantage and its according match statistics as explanatory factors during the exclusion of spectators under COVID-19 (Bryson et al, 2020;Cueva, 2020;Deutscher et al, 2020;Dilger and Vischer, 2020;Ferraresi and Gucciardi, 2020;Fischer and Haucap, 2020;Leitner and Richlan, 2020;McCarrick et al, 2020;Reade et al, 2020;Scoppa, 2020;Tilp and Thaller, 2020;Jiménez Sánchez and Lavín, 2021). Specifically, because of the small sample sizes, we examined whether losing the home field advantage when playing behind closed doors is random rather than meaningful.…”

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following the restrictions that were implemented globally to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, spectators were prohibited from attending the matches played toward the end of 2019/2020 season. The absence of the spectators enabled researchers to study the effect of the crowd on the home field advantage in professional soccer across leagues and countries (e.g., Bryson et al, 2020;Cueva, 2020;Deutscher et al, 2020;Dilger and Vischer, 2020;Ferraresi and Gucciardi, 2020;Fischer and Haucap, 2020;Leitner and Richlan, 2020;McCarrick et al, 2020;Reade et al, 2020;Scoppa, 2020;Sors et al, 2020;Tilp and Thaller, 2020). There seems to be overall consensus that the absence of the crowd has a particularly strong effect in the German 1 Note that the same audience that is perceived as facilitative/supportive by the home team may be perceived as inhibitive/threatening by the away team.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Losing the Home Field Advantage When Playing Behind Closed Doors During COVID-19: Change or Chance?

Yperen

2021

Front. Psychol.

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Due to restrictions against the COVID-19 pandemic, spectators were not allowed to attend soccer matches at the end of the 2019/2020 season. Previous studies suggest that the absence of a home crowd changes the home field advantage in terms of match outcomes, offensive performance, and referee decisions. However, because of the small sample sizes, these changes may be random rather than meaningful. To test this, we created 1,000,000 randomized samples from the previous four seasons with the exact same number of matches played behind closed doors in Europe’s four most elite soccer leagues at the end of the 2019/2020 season. We found that across countries (Germany, Spain, Italy, and England), performance indices and referee decisions (except red cards) indeed changed to the detriment of the home team beyond the level of chance. However, this overall pattern could be ascribed to specific countries. Most importantly, the proportion of points won by the home teams declined significantly only in Germany, which was accompanied by a meaningful increase in (1) the proportion of goals scored by the away teams and (2) the proportion of yellow cards given to the home teams. We conclude that the home field advantage may indeed be lost when spectators are absent. However, in future studies, more detailed behavioral analyses are needed to determine the robustness and the behavioral determinants of this phenomenon across leagues and countries.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Losing the Home Field Advantage When Playing Behind Closed Doors During COVID-19: Change or Chance?

Yperen

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…Shortly after, most of European football's top-flights returned in empty stadiums, while the French Ligue 1 was among those leagues that failed to resume the 2019/20 season. Some leagues, primarily smaller European leagues such as the Danish Superliga, the Swiss Super League, and the Russian Premier League, eventually returned with some fans in attendance (e.g., Cueva, 2020). Only a few football leagues worldwide, most prominently the Belarussian Premier League (Reade et al, 2020a), kept playing throughout this first wave.…”

Section: Closed Doors Football After Covid-19 Home Advantage and Refmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eliminating Supportive Crowds Reduces Referee Bias

2020

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We use a series of historical natural experiments in association football (soccer) to test whether social pressure affected behaviour and outcomes. We observe how the normal advantage for the home team of playing in their own stadium was eroded behind closed doors, with no supporters. After designing a three-step sample selection and regression strategy, to get as close as possible to a causal interpretation, the standout effect of an empty stadium was that referees cautioned visiting players significantly less often, by over a third of a yellow card per match or once for every twenty-two fouls. Closed doors matches were different because referees favoured the home team less in their decision making. These results add to the literature describing how home advantage in sports decreased during the Covid-19 pandemic, though many other factors changed at that time besides the emptying stadiums.

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“…We do not know whether the HA is a consequence of referees' behavior independent of the team performance, nor do we know to what extent referees' behavior and/or team performance cause HA. This trend has continued in the latest studies, which also analyzed the last season affected by Covid-19 39,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52] . While most of these studies demonstrate a reduction in HA due to the absence of a live audience, the processes behind the reduction are unknown.…”

Section: Problems With Previous Accounts Of Hamentioning

confidence: 99%

The (Missing) 12th Man: Home Advantage Mediated (HAM) by Referee Bias and Team Performance During Covid

Bilalić¹,

Gula²,

Vaci³

2021

Preprint

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The fans’ importance in sports is acknowledged by the term ‘the 12th man’, a figurative extra player for the home team. Sport teams are indeed more successful when they play in front of their fans than when they play away. The supposed mechanism behind this phenomenon, termed Home Advantage (HA), is that fans’ support spurs home players to better performance and biases referees, which in turn determines the outcome. The inference about the importance of fans’ support is, however, indirect as there is normally a 12th man of this kind, even if it is an opponent’s. The current pandemic, which forced sporting activities to take place behind closed doors, provides the necessary control condition. Here we employ a novel conceptual HA model on a sample of over 4,000 soccer matches from 12 European leagues, some played in front of spectators and some in empty stadia, to demonstrate that fans are indeed responsible for the HA. However, the absence of fans reduces the HA by a third, as the home team’s performance suffers and the officials’ bias disappears. The current pandemic reveals that the figurative 12th man is no mere fan hyperbole, but is in fact the most important player in the home team.

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Animal Spirits in the Beautiful Game. Testing social pressure in professional football during the COVID-19 lockdown

Cited by 31 publications

References 25 publications

Losing the Home Field Advantage When Playing Behind Closed Doors During COVID-19: Change or Chance?

Losing the Home Field Advantage When Playing Behind Closed Doors During COVID-19: Change or Chance?

Eliminating Supportive Crowds Reduces Referee Bias

The (Missing) 12th Man: Home Advantage Mediated (HAM) by Referee Bias and Team Performance During Covid

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