Search

This paper investigates how crowds affect the timing of events during football matches. In theory, the presence of fans influences the urgency of the players on the field, and the magnitude of this effect grows during the match. Thus, crowds should lead to a faster increase during the match in goals scored, yellow cards, red cards, and penalty kicks. We test the hypothesis using a data set including pandemic ghost games and we find strong support for the hypothesis as it relates to goals, yellow cards, and penalty kicks but not as it relates to red cards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent studies suggest that the home advantage, that is, the benefit competitors accrue from performing in familiar surroundings, was—at least temporarily—reduced in games played without spectators due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. These games played without fans during the Pandemic have been dubbed 'ghost games'. However, the majority of the research to date focus on soccer and no contributions have been provided for indoor sports, where the effect of the support of the fans might have a stronger impact than in outdoor arenas. In this paper, we try to fill this gap by investigating the effect of ghost games in basketball with a special focus on the possible reduction of the home advantage due to the absence of spectators inside the arena. In particular, we test (i) for the reduction of the home advantage in basketball, (ii) whether such reduction tends to disappear over time, (iii) if the bookmakers promptly adapt to such structural change or whether mispricing was created on the betting market. The results from a large data set covering all seasons since 2004 for the ten most popular and followed basketball leagues in Europe show, on the one hand, an overall significant reduction of the home advantage of around 5% and no evidence that suggests that this effect has been reduced at as teams became more accustomed to playing without fans; on the other hand, bookmakers appear to have anticipated such effect and priced home win in basketball matches accordingly, thus avoiding creating mispricing on betting markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Japan's performance at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and considers whether the inclusion of new sports and the Games being staged behind closed doors influenced Japan's performance as the host nation. We analysed Japan's medal output and ranking at Tokyo 2020 in the context of its historical Summer Olympic performances and compared with other recent hosts. We also analysed how Japan's performance changed between Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 in different events (men, women and mixed) and in different sports. Japan improved its performance at its home Games across multiple measures. Evidence of improvement between Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 was seen in men's, women's and mixed events and across the portfolio of sports that were common to both editions. Japan's home performance was amplified by its success in the new sports added to the programme. To promote fair competition, the inclusion of new sports at future Games should be evaluated on the basis of their global appeal alongside their local popularity within the host nation. Our findings somewhat challenge conventional wisdom that home crowd support is a key game location factor which contributes to home advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the efficiency of betting market pricing for top league soccer matches played behind closed doors during the COVID-19 pandemic. The removal of the crowd component of home advantage results in substantial improvement in both the market predictions of goal difference and home team wins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a five-year data set including the crowd-less games in the 2020 English, Spanish, Italian, and German first division football leagues and multivariate regression analysis, this paper estimated how fans influence home field advantage. Consistent with previous studies, the estimates showed that in games with crowds, referees gave fewer fouls, yellow cards, and red cards but more penalty kicks to the home team than to the away team. Removing the fans from the stadium eliminated these home advantages coming through referee decisions. Removing fans reduced yellow and red cards given to away teams but did not change cards given to home teams. There was not a similar asymmetry for fouls and penalty kicks. These results suggest that crowds influenced referee judgments about how severe an infraction was more than they influenced decisions about whether a foul occurred. The addition of VAR had little impact on referee decisions and no effect on the home advantage in goal differential. Despite the home bias in referee decisions when crowds were in the stadium, fouls, cards, and penalty kicks played a relatively small role in determining home advantage in game outcomes and most of the home advantage remained after fans were removed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of spectators on women's football games. COVID-19 and related restrictions provide a unique opportunity with an adequate sample size to test the effect of lockdown on sports activities. Studies have recently exploited this opportunity for men's football to better understand the potential causes of home advantage and, more specifically, assess the psychological consequences when matches are played without supporters. Despite the increased scientific interest, there was only one paper that focused on women's football. Therefore, we aim to contribute to this research field by considering matches from four major European women's football leagues. The findings suggest that for three of these leagues, lockdown has a statistically significant effect on the sanctioned yellow cards by either reducing the number of yellow cards sanctioned to the away teams or increasing the number of yellow cards sanctioned to the home teams. Nonetheless, lockdown does not affect any final match outcomes; therefore, it does not significantly affect the magnitude of home advantage for women's games. • Referreing activities and home advantage of women's football for pre- and post-COVID-19 periods are investigated. • Lockdown does not affect the magnitude of home advantage for women's football. • Sanctioned yellow cards are significantly affected by lockdown in line with the literature for men's football. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether sports betting markets are semi-strong form efficient--i.e., whether new information is rapidly and completely incorporated into betting prices. We use news on ghost games in the top European football leagues due to the COVID-19 pandemic as a clean arrival of new public information. Because spectators are absent during ghost games, the home advantage is reduced, and we test whether this information is fully reflected in betting prices. Our results show that bookmakers and betting exchanges systematically overestimated a home team's winning probability during the first period of the ghost games, which suggests that betting markets are, at least temporally, not semi-strong form efficient. Examining different leagues, we find that our main results are driven by the German Bundesliga, which was the first league to resume operations. We exploit a betting strategy that yields a positive net payoff over more than one month. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of the effect of COVID-19 restrictions on home advantage have been conducted on men's soccer, with the women's game lacking scientific attention. The present study fills this gap by investigating games in Swedish Damallsvenskan women's soccer league. Comparing games in the 2019 and 2020 seasons, we find a slight, but not statistically significant reduction in home advantage in games without crowds in terms of goals scored and points achieved. However, unlike in most studies on men's soccer, we find that away teams received significantly more yellow cards in games without crowds compared to games with crowds. We discuss our results in the context of the findings in men's soccer. JEL Classification: D00, J71, L00, Z13, Z20. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The support of home spectators is one of the contributing factors to the home advantage effect in sports matches. The COVID-19 pandemic led to European soccer matches being played without spectators. Contrary to previous findings in the literature, we show that betting markets adjusted promptly to account for a reduced home advantage in both goal difference and the probability of a win. These adjustments proved accurate over a large sample of soccer matches subsequently played without spectators, even though the earliest games appeared to suggest a much bigger change in home advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic forced almost all professional and amateur sports to be played without attending crowds. Thus, it induced a large-scale natural experiment on the impact of social pressure on decision making and behavior in sports fields. Using a data set of 1027 rugby union matches from 11 tournaments in 10 countries, we find that home teams have won less matches and their point difference decreased during the pandemic, shedding light on the impact of crowd attendance on the home advantage of sports teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to contribute to the recent literature on the effects of COVID on football teams' performance, focusing on the impact of ghost games on offensive and defensive technical efficiency. Using season-level data for the top 5 European leagues, a novelty for efficiency studies on football, the analysis compares the ten seasons played before the pandemic outbreak with the only season (2020–21) almost entirely played behind closed doors. A further novel contribution is the methodology – conditional order-m – applied to calculate efficiency scores. Our results show that in the post-COVID season both offensive and defensive efficiency significantly increased for away games, whereas for home games offensive efficiency shows a very slight increase, and defensive efficiency remains basically unchanged. These findings are valid for all the five leagues and provide evidence of a generalized reduction in the home advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports spectators are one of the factors that affect home advantage. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic created unique conditions under which most of the leagues in the world played matches without crowds for over six months. This situation facilitated an analytical comparison of two different periods: before and during the coronavirus pandemic. The current study sought to examine home advantage in the Israeli sport domain in general, and specifically the impact of the absence of a crowd. The study consisted of 4,030 matches played in Israel's top football and basketball leagues, of which 3,589 took place with crowds from August 2015 to March 2020, while the others were held without spectators from May 2020 to February 2021. Descriptive and analyses of variance procedures indicated a home advantage independent of crowd size, density, geographic region, league level, and type of sport. However, higher-quality teams demonstrated a higher home advantage ratio for the goals conceded. The findings of the study indicate that in the Israeli context, the crowd plays less of a role in home advantage than other potential factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the influence of corona-specific training and playing conditions - especially empty stadiums - on match performance, contact behavior, and home advantage in the Bundesliga (BL) and Bundesliga 2 (BL2). We analyzed the 2017/18, 2018/19, and 2019/20 seasons and compared matches in rounds 26–34 before shutdown with "ghost" matches after restart. Results show increased running activity for high intensity distance: (+ 6.1%) and total distance covered (+ 4.3%). In BL2 in particular there were also changes in tactical aspects of the game (time in last third: –6.3%, pressure on pass receiver: –8.6%, success of attacking duels: –7.9%, share of long passes completed: + 15.6%, outplayed opponents per pass: –14.7%). Contact time to other players (< 2 m distance) was 15:35 mins per match. After restart, contact was reduced, especially when the ball was not in the last third (–11.2%). Away wins increased by +44.2% in BL and the home-away difference in yellow cards changed in favor of the away team (+31.2%) in BL2. We conclude that empty stadiums have reduced home advantage and decreased referee bias when awarding yellow cards. Player behavior might have been affected by tactical demands and/or conscious or unconscious self-protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Covid-19 pandemic reached Europe in mid-March 2020, sport was one of the first activities to be impacted. Precautions taken to limit the spread of the virus resulted in professional football matches being played without spectators. This produced the conditions of a natural experiment enabling the empirical testing of related hypotheses. Using numerous observations from the top European leagues, this study analysed the role of spectators in one of the major phenomena of sports literature - the home advantage i.e., the home team's tendency to win more often than the away team. Strong evidence of the existence of a home advantage both in pre-Covid 19 and Covid-19 periods was found. However, the difference between points earned in favour of the home teams was found to decrease in the Covid period. This was found to be statistically significant when using the Difference-in-Difference (DiD) methodology found in many existing studies. However, alternative analyses 1) using each match as a single observation, rather than adding the away teams in as a control group and 2) taking into account the difference between the performances of the competing teams in previous matches, showed the differences in favour of the home teams with and without spectators to be statistically non-significant. Therefore, it is recommended that in future studies of this kind the most realistic and comprehensive measurement model possible needs to be applied if an accurate picture is to be gained. The conclusion of this study is that, although a decrease in the home advantage was observed when games were played without spectators, it was not sufficient to make a significant difference to that advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]