How does spectator presence affect football? Home advantage remains in European top-class football matches played without spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Results from amateur football provide further evidence that the home advantage is predominantly caused by factors not directly or indirectly attributable to a noteworthy number of spectators, while the present paper supports prior research with regard to a crowd-induced referee bias.Abstract:
The present paper investigates factors contributing to the home advantage, by using the exceptional opportunity to study professional football matches played in the absence of spectators due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. More than 40,000 matches before and during the pandemic, including more than 1,000 professional matches without spectators across the main European football leagues, have been analyzed. Results support the notion of a crowd-induced referee bias as the increased sanctioning of away teams disappears in the absence of spectators with regard to fouls (p < .001), yellow cards (p < .001), and red cards (p < .05). Moreover, the match dominance of home teams decreases significantly as indicated by shots (p < .001) and shots on target (p < .01). In terms of the home advantage itself, surprisingly, only a non-significant decrease is found. While the present paper supports prior research with regard to a crowd-induced referee bias, spectators thus do not seem to be the main driving factor of the home advantage. Results from amateur football, being naturally played in absence of a crowd, provide further evidence that the home advantage is predominantly caused by factors not directly or indirectly attributable to a noteworthy number of spectators.read more
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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Home Advantage In Sport Competitions: A Literature Review
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide a conceptual framework to organize a comprehensive review of previous game location research and provide direction for future research, highlighting the underlying mechanisms responsible for the manifestation of the home advantage.
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Psychology: red enhances human performance in contests.
Russell A. Hill,Robert A. Barton +1 more
TL;DR: Across a range of sports, it is found that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning, indicating not only that sexual selection may have influenced the evolution of human response to colours, but also that the colour of sportswear needs to be taken into account to ensure a level playing field in sport.
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Home advantage in sport: an overview of studies on the advantage of playing at home.
Alan M. Nevill,Roger Holder +1 more
TL;DR: A number of studies provide strong evidence that home advantage increases with crowd size, until the crowd reaches a certain size or consistency, after which a peak in home advantage is observed.
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TL;DR: 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.
Journal ArticleDOI
Home ground advantage of individual clubs in English soccer
Stephen R. Clarke,John M. Norman +1 more
TL;DR: It is shown that for a balanced competition this is equivalent to a simple calculator method using only data from the final ladder and a paired home advantage is defined and shown to be linearly related to the distance between club grounds.