Home Advantage during the COVID-19 Pandemic in European football

McCarrick, Dane; Bilalić, Merim; Neave, Nick; Wolfson, Sandy

doi:10.31234/osf.io/2gkht

Cited by 13 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…This lack of diminishing of home advantage on rounds without an audience is contrary to McCarrick et al [ 11 ] and Tilp and Thaller [ 12 ].…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 62%

“…This suggests that crowd support is not a necessary precondition for the home advantage. More recently, McCarrick, Bilalic, Neave, and Wolfson [ 11 ] studied all European leagues that finished 2019–2020 season without an audience. Although no individual analysis by country was available, global results revealed that, with an audience, teams won on average 0.39 points per game more at home than away, a figure that diminished to only 0.22 points more at home than away without an audience.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Home-Advantage during COVID-19: An Analysis in Portuguese Football League

Matos

Monteiro

Antunes

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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Covid-19 pandemic forced, at the final rounds of 2019–2020 season, in many different sport leagues worldwide, teams to play without an audience. Therefore, the present paper aims to compare the home advantage score in the last ten rounds in 2019–2020 season with the first 24 rounds in same season using Pollard’s (1986) and Matos et al.’s (2020) methods. In addition, comparisons across different seasons (2016–2017; 2017–2018; 2018–2019 and 2019–2020) using the same methods were also analyzed. Results showed no differences (p > 0.05) between first 24 rounds and the last 10 in 2019–2020 season as well as in the 3 previous seasons. With Pollard’s method, no differences (p > 0.05) were also found among those four seasons on global (all 34 rounds) home advantage. However, a significance difference between 2017–2018 and 2019–2020 (p < 0.05) was founded using Matos et al.’s (2020) method, which is an indicator of the importance of using complementary methods when analyzing the same realities. Overall, despite what might be expectable from recent findings, the lack of an audience in the last 10 rounds of Portuguese Football League 2019–2020 season, due to COVID-19 pandemic, did not affect home advantage. Therefore, future studies could try to analyze other different variables in Portuguese Football League, such as referees’ behaviors, rules changing (e.g., the possibility of making five substitutions, instead of three), crowd dimension and density as well as include variables about odds as forecasts in football being played without crowds.

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“…This lack of diminishing of home advantage on rounds without an audience is contrary to McCarrick et al [ 11 ] and Tilp and Thaller [ 12 ].…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 62%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Home-Advantage during COVID-19: An Analysis in Portuguese Football League

Matos

Monteiro

Antunes

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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“…In 2020, the decrease in HA in soccer games without audience during the Covid-19 pandemic was confirmed by several working papers applying regression models. Home performance, assessed as home wins, point differences between home and away team, or team dominance decreased in the collapsed data from 13 European leagues (McCarrick et al, 2020 ) and in the first German Bundesliga (Fischer and Haucap, 2020 ). Interestingly, Fischer and Haucap ( 2020 ) did not observe a reduction in home advantage in the second and third German soccer league.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fischer and Haucap ( 2020 ) analyzed the first three divisions of the German Bundesliga and observed a reduction of the HA only in the first league which was related to occupancy rates, i.e., HA was reduced most in teams with high occupancy in their stadium during regular seasons. McCarrick et al ( 2020 ) analyzed the effect of games without audience collapsed from 15 different European soccer leagues and found that empty stadiums decreased home team performance and affected referees' decisions. When analyzing 23 leagues worldwide, Bryson et al ( 2020 ) discovered large and statistically significant effects on the number of yellow cards when no audience was present.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covid-19 Has Turned Home Advantage Into Home Disadvantage in the German Soccer Bundesliga

Tilp

Thaller

2020

Front. Sports Act. Living

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The main factors for home advantage (HA), quantified by the number of points won at home expressed as a percentage of all points, are believed to be crowd support, territoriality, familiarity, and travel fatigue. In 2020, the German Soccer Bundesliga interrupted its championship due to the Covid-19 pandemic after 25 rounds and the last nine rounds were played without audience. This unique situation allowed studying the effect of spectators on the team's performance and the referee's decisions. We hypothesized a decrease in HA and a more balanced distribution of fouls and disciplinary cards in the games without audience (GWOA) compared to the games with audience (GWA). We evaluated n = 223 GWA and n = 83 GWOA of the season 2019/20 and all games of the preceding season 2018/19 to analyze the distribution of game outcomes (wins, losses, and draws) and HA. We analyzed the number of fouls, disciplinary cards, and penalty kicks. We found significant differences in HA between GWA (HA = 54.35%) and GWOA (HA = 44.1%) as well as GWOA and games of 2018/19 (HA = 57.63%). The distribution of game outcomes in GWOA did not differ from GWA but differed significantly from 2018/19 (p = 0.031). The distribution of fouls showed a significant difference to equal distribution in GWA [home: 2,595 (48.56%); away: 2,749 (51.44%)] but not in GWOA [home: 1,067 (50.54%); away: 1,044 (49.46%)]. In the GWOA, we counted 178 (51.1%, home) and 170 (48.9%, away) cards, representing a significant difference in the distribution to GWA [home: 405 (44.85%); away: 498 (55.15%)]. The number of red cards differed significantly from an equal distribution for GWA (14 home and 28 away) but not for GWOA (eight home and seven away). In the last nine rounds without audience, we observed more home losses (36) than home wins (27). Hence, the Covid-19 lock-down led to a home disadvantage. One reason for this surprising result could be that the home team is missing an important familiar aspect when playing in their empty stadium without social support from their home audience. Furthermore, both teams know about the HA thus the away team could be more motivated in this unusual situation.

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“…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%

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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Home Advantage during the COVID-19 Pandemic in European football

Cited by 13 publications

References 19 publications

Home-Advantage during COVID-19: An Analysis in Portuguese Football League

Home-Advantage during COVID-19: An Analysis in Portuguese Football League

Covid-19 Has Turned Home Advantage Into Home Disadvantage in the German Soccer Bundesliga

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

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