Inconsistencies of the Evaluation of Home Advantage in Sports Competitions Under the Three Points Per Victory System

Abstract

A recent letter sent to the Journal of Human Kinetics’ editor (Gómez & Pollard, 2014) warned about a supposed methodology error in the calculation of home advantage in football leagues used in Saavedra et al. (2013) and took the liberty of modifying the research’s data. The aim of this letter is to demonstrate that the evaluation system of the home advantage proposed by Pollard (1986) contains serious inconsistencies when applied to competitions which give three points for a win and one point for a draw, as it is the case of the UEFA football leagues in the 21th century.

Validity of the Established Method of Quantifying Home Advantage in Soccer

“…A recent letter published in the Journal of Human Kinetics ( Saavedra et al, 2014 ) falsely claims that inconsistencies occur in a universally accepted method of calculating home advantage when three points are awarded for a win. They go on to claim that an alternative method that they advocate is superior.…”

“…Suppose team A gains 40 points at home and 40 points away from home, and team B scores 40 points at home and 10 away from home. According to Saavedra et al (2014) these two teams have the same home advantage because they gained the same number of points at home. However, it should be obvious that team A actually has no home advantage at all, since it does equally well away as it does at home, while team B has a big home advantage since it gains four times as many points at home than it does away.…”

“… Saavedra et al (2014) go on to criticize the paper by Pollard (1986) on the grounds that draws in cricket and US football were not considered when calculating home advantage. This paper was written almost 30 years ago and should be set in context.…”

“…In other words, better quality teams have lower home advantage not higher. It should also be noted that Allen and Jones (2014) used the method introduced by Pollard (1986) to quantify home advantage, the exact same method which Saavedra et al (2014) now wrongly claim has ‘inconsistencies’.…”