Estimating the effect of attendance on home advantage in the National Basketball Association

Ehrlich, Justin; Potter, Joel

doi:10.1080/13504851.2022.2061898

Cited by 19 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The authors have found a decrease in the HA, and these results were consistent independently of the team ability level (i.e., low, medium, or high). The crowd support has been found as an important and contributor factor for home team performance (Leota et al, 2021;Ehrlich and Potter, 2022). Despite that, available literature on the impact of the number of spectators, occupancy rate, and noise levels on HA has yielded controversial results.…”

Section: Impact Of Home Advantage On Match Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Euroleague Basketball

et al. 2022

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The aim of this study was to understand how training and playing conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic affected the performance of Euroleague Basketball players. Using a non-participant observation analysis, the study compared the seasons before the lockdown (2018–2019 and 2019–2020; pre-pandemic) with the season after restart (2020–2021; pandemic). Paired t-tests and Wilcoxon tests were applied for variables with normal and non-normal distributions, respectively. The results revealed significant changes (p < 0.05) in several offensive and defensive performance-related variables during pandemic times (without attendance): free throw attempts, free throw percentage, turnovers, three-point attempt rate, fouls (small effect sizes, ESs), points, and possessions (trivial ES). The pre-pandemic HA (70%) significantly decreased after the lockdown, with games played with no crowd (∼51%; p = 0.018, large ES). The one-sample t-test showed that the HA after the COVID-19 interruption was not significantly greater than 50%, indicating that the HA did not endure during the pandemic condition. Although significant differences between home and away teams were found for most performance-related variables (excepting turnovers) in both pre-pandemic and pandemic conditions, variations of the relative HA were only significant for free throw attempts (large ES), points (medium ES), and turnovers (medium ES). The results of this study showed that performance variables were affected by the COVID-19 lockdown. Thus, these findings may help coaches, players, and referees to counteract unwanted competitive events and improve their overall performance, regardless of the contextual/situational circumstances encountered.

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Section: Impact Of Home Advantage On Match Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Euroleague Basketball

et al. 2022

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“…As I mentioned at the introduction, there are different lines of literature that have explored the presence of various types of referee biases, notably home court, “star” player and racial biases 4 , 5 , 9 – 15 , 19 – 22 in a variety of sports. Almost all of these studies use as the variable of interest the volume of calls (or some function of it) for or against teams/players.…”

Section: Related Work and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Earlier studies on this had utilized only a handful of games played without fans because of sanctions imposed on teams, and the results were mixed 7 , 8 . Many recent studies utilized the natural experiment setting provided by the COVID-19 pandemic to examine the impact of empty arenas and stadiums on the home court advantage and refereeing bias 9 – 15 , with the majority of them pointing to a negative impact of reduced or no crowds on home field advantage and officials bias towards the home team 10 – 12 , 16 . Referees might not only show a bias towards the home team but also towards specific individual— star —players or specific teams, regardless of where the game is played (e.g., teams that are on the top of the standings).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying implicit biases in refereeing using NBA referees as a testbed

Pelechrinis

2023

Sci Rep

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Implicit biases occur automatically and unintentionally and are particularly present when we have to make split second decisions. One such situations appears in refereeing, where referees have to make an instantaneous decision on a potential violation. In this work I revisit and extend some of the existing work on implicit biases in refereeing. In particular, I focus on refereeing in the NBA and examine three different types of implicit bias; (i) home-vs-away bias, (ii) bias towards individual players or teams, and, (iii) racial bias. For this study, I use play-by-play data and data from the Last 2 min reports the league office releases for games that were within 5 points in the last 2 min since the 2015 season. The results indicate that the there is a bias towards the home team—particularly pronounced during the playoffs—but it has been reduced since the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, there is robust statistical evidence that specific players benefit from referee decisions more than expected from pure chance. However, I find no evidence of negative bias towards individual players, or towards specific teams. Finally, my analysis on racial bias indicates the absence of any bias.

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“…Our study about the differences in match performances between home and away games before the COVID-19 pandemic is in line with the previous studies. Ehrlich and Potter (2022) found that the presence of fans matters to home team performance; in fact, “ghost games” eliminated HA in totality. In particular, Leicht et al (2017) identified that home teams displayed better performance in terms of shooting efficiency, and offensive and defensive rebounds whereas away teams often make fouls to disturb the game pace of home teams and attempted more aggressive techniques such as steals combined with long-distance shooting to overcome game unexpected factors (e.g., dynamic tactics from home teams, self-negative psychological and behavioral states, crowd pressure, or less protection by the referees).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on match performances in the National Basketball Association

et al. 2022

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This study aimed to compare differences in the match performances between home and away games during pre- and post-COVID-19 lockdown and to identify the key factors to match success with and without spectators. The sample consisted of 1,549 basketball matches including 971 games of the 2019–2020 regular season before the COVID-19 lockdown and 578 ghost matches of the 2020–2021 regular season after the COVID-19 pandemic. The independent t-test was used to explore the differences before and after COVID-19 while univariate and multivariable logistic regression models were used to identify the key factors to match success between matches with and without spectators. Our study identified that offensive rebounds were the only indicator differentiating between home and away games after the COVID-19 lockdown. Furthermore, home teams won more matches than away matches before the COVID-19 whereas home advantage had no impact on winning matches after the COVID-19. Our study suggested that crowd support may play a key role in winning games in the NBA. Furthermore, independently of the pre-and post-COVID19 pandemic, free throws made, three-point field goals made, defensive rebounds, assists, steals, personal fouls, and opponent quality were key factors differentiating between win and loss. Coaches and coaching staff can make informed decisions and well prepare for basketball match strategies.

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Estimating the effect of attendance on home advantage in the National Basketball Association

Cited by 19 publications

References 15 publications

Exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Euroleague Basketball

Exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Euroleague Basketball

Quantifying implicit biases in refereeing using NBA referees as a testbed

Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on match performances in the National Basketball Association

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