[Discussion] There is more to Home Advantage than just Fans

[tyKiwanuka]

When reading through the betting world, through forums and different analyses to predict the outcome of a sport event, you will often hear about the impact of home advantage. You will read something like "they have great fans", "40,000 fans will cheer them to victory" or even "they don't have a lot of fans, so not much home advantage". While this might be valid to some extent, there is some misconception of what home advantage is and/or what are all the ingredients of it.

Playing in front of your fans and home crowd is certainly a big advantage. They can tip the scale in decisive moments, they can get a few extra percent out of a team, they can cheer you up, when you are down. They can also be cruel sometimes, but normally they will support you no matter what - as long as you show effort and fight till the end relentlessly.

The common opinion about (only) fans being the home advantage would suggest, that we will see a lot of f.e. football matches in the next weeks, where there is no home advantage, since they are played behind closed doors due to Corona virus. Home advantage will normally reflect in the odds with a 10% shift in favour of the home team. So, in a 2-way market, where both teams are considered equally strong, the probabilities to win start at 60% vs. 40%, disregarding all other circumstances.

Monitoring the odds movement from those games, where there will be no spectators, will let you realize, that there wasn't a rescission of that 10% to meet the fact, that there is no home advantage no more. Why is that ? Answer: There is more to home advantage than just fans and it's often overlooked imo.

I won't just list, what I think are additional factors to home advantage, because that would be boring. I want to hear your thoughts about what home advantage is for you, if you agree with my statement that it's not just the fans.

Discuss.


Source: https://www.fnp.de/frankfurt/frankfurt-hessen-denkt-eintracht-frankfurt-ueber-eine-pyro-legalisierung-stadien-11783690.html


Self-moderated thread and I will delete all spam posts (based on my judgement).

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[tyKiwanuka]

Looks like people are too busy playing Dice

Some points to consider regarding home advantage apart from just fans. When playing at home, .....

• You don't have to go through the hassle of travelling. Sitting in the bus, train or plane for hours is or can be weary and disrupts your preparation.
• You can sleep in your own bed instead of in some hotel room. You can have breakfast with your family and go through your morning routines relaxed. Afterwards you can drive to the stadium in your own car. After the games has finished, you know, that you will be at home in a short period of time again.
• Arriving at the stadium, everything is familiar. You will see a lot of familiar faces in and around the stadium. This might just be the car-park attendant or the greenkeeper.
• In the locker room you have your own locker, that you use every time and that even might have some personal things in it.
• When entering the stadium, there are no surprises. You know where the fans are, you know all the banners, you might see some familiar faces in the stands.
• Especially in Basketball, the home advantage is pretty big imo. That is due to the fact, that you always have the same view to the hoop and the backboard. You have thrown to it gazillion times - your eyes don't have to process new information.

In general there is way less stress, when playing at home. Going on an away trip, there is a lot of things that might distract you. It can be the hotel room, the food, the locker room, the stadium, whatever. And then again, you still have a few teams, that tend to do better in away games than at home. Not forever, but for a certain period of time.

[South Park]

There are even more advantages to be had.

1. On International games you are not going to suffer from Jet lag which can be a real issue especially when you are trying to perform at the highest level possible.

2. Depending on the game there are different sizes the field may have and still fall under the rules, so playing at home gives you advantage in the sense that you know perfectly the size of the field while the visitor may make several mistakes because the field is bigger or smaller than their own.

3. The weather can be a big influence in the games especially if there is some kind of condition that the opposite team is not used to experimenting, for example teams that play in a warm weather may have problems playing in colder weather.

4. The sea level can be a huge factor as well if it is really high and visiting players come from a place that is near the sea level, if the sport uses a ball then the ball will have a tendency to travel farther away and visiting players will experience fatigue faster due to the reduced levels of oxygen.

[tyKiwanuka]

Yes, good points. My little list is of course not exhaustive, there are lots of other points and each sport probably has its own little details that add to home advantage. So everyone feel free to share your thoughts. I know most sports or watched them at least once in my life, but for example Cricket is something, that I have no, really no, idea about. So would be interested to hear, if in Cricket there are certain things, that add to home advantage. 

1. On International games you are not going to suffer from Jet lag which can be a real issue especially when you are trying to perform at the highest level possible.

Yes, this could maybe be included in travel stress in general, but I have to admit, that I didn't have that one in mind. In Europe this is not that much of an issue, but already in the US when travelling from one coast to the other, it can be important (f.e. the NFL west coast teams playing at 1pm at the east coast). I remember, when Vladivostok was in Russian Premier League and the mostly in West Russia located teams had to travel there. It was a) a huge travel and b) some hours time difference. And vice versa, the Vladivostok team had to basically go on a world trip every two weeks for their away games

2. Depending on the game there are different sizes the field may have and still fall under the rules, so playing at home gives you advantage in the sense that you know perfectly the size of the field while the visitor may make several mistakes because the field is bigger or smaller than their own.

I know Barca has a huge pitch. It was intentionally designed as big as possbile to suit the playing style of them. In german Bundesliga you have Freiburg and the pitch in their stadium has some gradient (it's around 1m iirc), so for one half you would always have to play a uphill a bit.

3. The weather can be a big influence in the games especially if there is some kind of condition that the opposite team is not used to experimenting, for example teams that play in a warm weather may have problems playing in colder weather.

Yep, we can witness that very well every year in NFL. Carr doesn't like to play in cold weather f.e. and going to Foxborough or Lambeau in January is even more of a problem for a lot of teams than it normally is anyway.

4. The sea level can be a huge factor as well if it is really high and visiting players come from a place that is near the sea level, if the sport uses a ball then the ball will have a tendency to travel farther away and visiting players will experience fatigue faster due to the reduced levels of oxygen.

In the Copa Libertadores you have these teams from Ecuador (?) and Bolivia that have a huge home advantage, because they play on 3,000m+ altitude. It's extremely hard, even for way superior teams on paper, to play there, because they are just not used to it and struggle like crazy with their breathing.

[Lakai01]

In general there is way less stress, when playing at home. Going on an away trip, there is a lot of things that might distract you. It can be the hotel room, the food, the locker room, the stadium, whatever. And then again, you still have a few teams, that tend to do better in away games than at home. Not forever, but for a certain period of time.

Very interesting thread, thanks!

In my opinion, all of your mentioned points can be reduced to this factor: "less stress"
Human minds tend to react with "stress" in unknown situations (foreign stadium, foreign locker, foreign people around them, ...). This behavior stems from a time when our urahns wandered around every day to look for food and death could have waited around every corner. The body is tense in a stressful situation, expecting dangerous situations where you have to flee of fight immediately, leading to the fact that your body wastes energy to keep this state. Of course, this behaviour was a life safer back then, nowadays its simply not so important anymore, there wont be any tiger waiting for you around the next corner

If you are familiar with your surroundings (stadium, locker, people) your body simply is not that tense and you don't waste energy for keeping your senses "stressed". So in my opinion, better preparation for important games without additional stress factors is an important point why there is a home advantage at all.

[Haunebu]

The biggest factor is the home ground itself in my opinion. No jet lag thanks to travelling, fans supporting you etc do help in reducing stress levels, but the home ground matters a lot more. Coronavirus can't take away the home ground advantage.

Examples:
- I am an avid follower of Cricket and the teams that play on their home ground usually win when compared to the visitors since they recognize the pros and cons of the ground in a much better manner when compared to the visitors.
- The same applies to any sport based on statistics(NBA, NFL etc).

[Darker45]

I think this has not yet been mentioned yet. In a way, a match is also a kind of a turf war. It seems to me that teams are also territorial animals. They won't just bow down to their enemies in their very own soil. I guess this is also another factor about home advantage. It is not just about the fans but also about the name of their home. In every battle, they are carrying with them the honor of their place. If a team wins a championship trophy, it is not just about the team proving their might, it is also about a city or a state or a country gaining honor and respect for the kind of athlete or sports warriors they have. That is why a defeat at home is much more bitter than a defeat in another territory. It hurts the team, their territory, and their pride.

[mu_enrico]

In football (soccer, not NFL), the football pitches have different sizes.

Did you know that not all pitches are the same size?

The length of a pitch must be between 100 yards (90m) and 130 yards (120m) and the width not less than 50 yards (45m) and not more than 100 yards (90m).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/rules_and_equipment/4200666.stm

I know that the home team does not always use the home stadium as their training ground; however, they play half of their league matches on it. They will get used to the size, the grass, the atmosphere, etc. These familiarities will help them perform better. When a team used to play on the wide pitch, they will find it more difficult to do the long ball on the narrow pitch, and vice versa.

[Lakai01]

The biggest factor is the home ground itself in my opinion. No jet lag thanks to travelling, fans supporting you etc do help in reducing stress levels, but the home ground matters a lot more. Coronavirus can't take away the home ground advantage.

It is a matter of the game if the factor of the home ground itself matters at all. I am sure it does for games like cricket, but I am definitely sure the effect of knowing the ground better than the opposing team is negligible for games like soccer, basketball, tennis and so on. The ground itself usually doesn't have a big influence on this games itself - at least not the fact that one teams knows it better than the other.

[xvids]

But I guess there are times that it would put a lot of pressure to the players because they know that there are so many people out there who expects them to win.
To be honest I don't really believe in home advantage it all goes down to the skills,physical and mental health of the players.

[tyKiwanuka]

But I guess there are times that it would put a lot of pressure to the players because they know that there are so many people out there who expects them to win.

That is definitely true. Playing in front of your home crowd puts some additional pressure on you, but this is clearly outweighed by all the positive aspects home advantage brings.
I remember tennis player Samantha Stosur, who was Top10 player for several years. Now in tennis, there is not that much of an home advantage, since a lot of advantages don't apply here (it's really mostly the fans), but Stosur was always a nerve wreck when playing at her home Grand Slam in Melbourne. She just couldn't handle the pressure with all the Aussies expecting her to go deep and/or even win the tournament.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Stosur

She also did pretty poor at Wimbledon, which is a surprise regarding her playing style and Aussies normally doing very well on grass, but this is another story.

To be honest I don't really believe in home advantage it all goes down to the skills,physical and mental health of the players.

You can't deny the fact, that there is the factor home advantage. Just look at the records for Football, Handball, Basketball, Icehockey etc teams. 95% of them do better at home than they do in away games. When Liverpool plays ManCity at home, they definitely have higher chances of winning than playing @ManCity.

[Lakai01]

You can't deny the fact, that there is the factor home advantage.

True that. In fact, the factor of home advantage is very well researched. There are lots of statistics, papers and articles out there which deal with the home advantage and how it has to be considered for outcomes of games, eg. in sports betting.

I found two very interesting articles which I want you to show. The first one is a record accross 64 soccer leagues and 80k matches. The record orders different soccer leagues by the influence of home advantage on the games played. The most interesting fact is the last record set, its the Maltese Premier League:



As you can see the factor is 1, meaning home advantage doesn't have any influence on any game. Why is that? The Maltese Premier League is a very small league, all games are played in the same stadium, so there is no "home team" at all.

The second article lists a lot of factors which influence home advantage. According to this article the so called "Referee Bias" is the most influental factor on home team advantage:

There is overwhelming evidence that referees decisions are biased towards the home team. Moskowitz and Wertheim (2012) found that the referee was the most influential factor on home advantage, and that home teams gained a small bias from the referee. They did make it clear that this is not done consciously, instead, the referees were affected subconsciously by the emotion of a home crowd.

[tyKiwanuka]

The second article lists a lot of factors which influence home advantage. According to this article the so called "Referee Bias" is the most influental factor on home team advantage:

There is overwhelming evidence that referees decisions are biased towards the home team. Moskowitz and Wertheim (2012) found that the referee was the most influential factor on home advantage, and that home teams gained a small bias from the referee. They did make it clear that this is not done consciously, instead, the referees were affected subconsciously by the emotion of a home crowd.

Interesting, thanks. Refs are also always a little biased towards the bigger, more well-known players/teams (without me having any data to back that up). Like for example, if Ronaldo gets tackled, the ref is more likely to blow the whistle, than when a 19-year old scrub gets tackled. As for the article mentioned above, now that I think of it, it definitely makes sense. I guess this is especially valid for possibly game-changing incidents like penalties, free-kicks near the box, handball etc. When 50,000 people scream "hand", the ref might be urged more to give a penalty for example. But with the introduction of VAR, this maybe does not have such a big impact anymore, since everything is reviewed.

I would also claim, that a ref is more likely to give a foul, when the fouled player is screaming loud and doing some Hollywood afterwards - even if there was no foul at all. Would be interested in some analysis about that

[Pmalek]

One sport where home field advantage is not such a big factor is ice hockey. But even here there is a different between European ice hockey and the NHL. In the NHL it happens quite often that the better team losses at home against a team who is the underdog. But NHL teams travel a lot and play 3-4 matches a week. This fatigue can also be the reason why such things happen. I like the changes that NHL made for this season. The teams now play a few successive matches at home and than they go for a little away tour. Once this away tour ends and they play in from of their home fans again, surprises happen (yes I am looking at you Colorado).     

[LTU_btc]

Since most sports events is postponed, now we have time for this interesting discussion.
When we talk about home court advantage, first thing which comes to my mind is support of local fans. But there is much more things which are ore or less important. In away games players are travelling by planes and buses, they spend time on airports and traffic jams. Offcourse it doesn't help to get rest and prepare for the game. On international games, time zone difference is also a factor.
While home team have advantages - players sleep in their own bed instead of hotel, eat common food, arrive to stadium like every day. They have common suroundings, same dressing room. In basketball even basket rims are different in every arena - it's big factor.
In football, quality of pitch is another factor. Maybe it's less common in top leagues when we almost all teams have top notch pitches, it's more about lower divisions and less popular leagues, when sometimes away team arrive to play in potato field. In some leagues, like in my country, several teams play on artificial turfs - it's huge advantage against teams which play and prepare for the game on natural grass. And vice versa.
On the other, home court isn't always is advantage, because players get additional pressure and players sometimes fail to handle it. First example which homes to my mind is Brazil football team in World Cup 2014. But it's not that frequent cases - there is not so many teams which play better away than at home.

I know Barca has a huge pitch. It was intentionally designed as big as possbile to suit the playing style of them. In german Bundesliga you have Freiburg and the pitch in their stadium has some gradient (it's around 1m iirc), so for one half you would always have to play a uphill a bit.

I knew that pitches have different sizes, but didn't knew that such big difference is allowed. But I may be wrong, but at least in biggest leagues sizes of pitches are pretty much similar size and few meters difference isn't very big factor. Now I can't find all these dimensions compiled into single place and I'm lazy to check wiki page of every stadium.
It's interesting thing about Freiburg pitch, for me it's strange that's allowed on such big level competition.

In the Copa Libertadores you have these teams from Ecuador (?) and Bolivia that have a huge home advantage, because they play on 3,000m+ altitude. It's extremely hard, even for way superior teams on paper, to play there, because they are just not used to it and struggle like crazy with their breathing.

It's huge factor and in past FIFA had banned games on high altitude, once Argentina lost 6:1 to Bolivia. It's very often to see Argentina or Brazil struggling against these teams and Bolivia and Ecuador are always trying to use this advantage.

As you can see the factor is 1, meaning home advantage doesn't have any influence on any game. Why is that? The Maltese Premier League is a very small league, all games are played in the same stadium, so there is no "home team" at all.

Actually, it's not true, in Maltese Premier League there is 3 stadiums is used https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_Premier_League
But probably this fact doesn't makes big difference.

One sport where home field advantage is not such a big factor is ice hockey. But even here there is a different between European ice hockey and the NHL. In the NHL it happens quite often that the better team losses at home against a team who is the underdog. But NHL teams travel a lot and play 3-4 matches a week. This fatigue can also be the reason why such things happen. I like the changes that NHL made for this season. The teams now play a few successive matches at home and than they go for a little away tour. Once this away tour ends and they play in from of their home fans again, surprises happen (yes I am looking at you Colorado).     

I think home field advantage is not that big factor in NHL (in NBA too) because of long regular season. Cost of loss isn't that big there, so this is why we see these upsets so often. Things usually change when playoffs begin.

[tyKiwanuka]

It's interesting thing about Freiburg pitch, for me it's strange that's allowed on such big level competition.

It's actually not the only issue with the Schwarzwaldstadion in Freiburg Their pitch is officially too short for the official Bundesliga rules. It's 4.5 meters short - needs to be at least 105 meters, but theirs is only 100.5 meters. They play with a special permit for years already. But they are building a new stadium right now, which is ready for next season and everything will be fine there

Out of curiosity I have looked for the different pitch sizes and found some information here:

Some other popular stadium pitch sizes are as follows:

Anfield – 100 yards by 74 yards (101m x 68m)
Camp Nou – 114 yards by 74 yards (105m x 68m)
Emirates Stadium –115 yards by 74 yards (105m x 68m)
Etihad Stadium – 115 yards by 74 yards (105m x 68m)
Old Trafford – 116 yards by 76 yards (106m x 69m)
Stamford Bridge – 112 yards by 73 yards (103m x 67m)
White Hart Lane – 109 yards by 73 yards (100m x 67m)

So while Camp Nou is big-ish, there are other pitches with the same size or even bigger (Old Trafford). The difference to f.e. Anfield might not look big on paper, but makes quite a difference in reality imo. It's 272m² more to cover.

In some leagues, like in my country, several teams play on artificial turfs - it's huge advantage against teams which play and prepare for the game on natural grass.

Yes, good point. While the teams in Lithuania probably are used to change between artificial/natural grass by now, I remember some discussions regarding the Europa League, when teams that always play on natural grass had to go for an away game and play on artificial turf there. If I am not mistaken, there are some teams from Switzerland and Norway that play on artificial turf and were participants in Europa League in the past.

[Lakai01]

I guess this is especially valid for possibly game-changing incidents like penalties, free-kicks near the box, handball etc. When 50,000 people scream "hand", the ref might be urged more to give a penalty for example. But with the introduction of VAR, this maybe does not have such a big impact anymore, since everything is reviewed.

I would also claim, that a ref is more likely to give a foul, when the fouled player is screaming loud and doing some Hollywood afterwards - even if there was no foul at all. Would be interested in some analysis about that

This article gives reasons why the referee may be influenced. In my opinion, one of the main reasons is surely the audience. In the home stadium you automatically have 20k + people, who may not make your decisions and let you feel that with interjections and insults. The younger and unexperienced the referee is the more likely it is that he will not make any decisions that the home audience would not like.
The article further states that in stadiums with no running track between the audience and the pitch (like in Old Trafford) it is way more likely that the referee favours the home team. Very interesting stuff in my opinion and should definitly be considered in sports betting
 

[Haunebu]

I am sure it does for games like cricket, but I am definitely sure the effect of knowing the ground better than the opposing team is negligible for games like soccer, basketball, tennis and so on. The ground itself usually doesn't have a big influence on this games itself - at least not the fact that one teams knows it better than the other.

I partially disagree with you here. Lets take Tennis for example. Some players are better on clay courts when compared to other players who are better on grass courts and that is a proven fact. However, all sports are not the same.

Home ground itself helps home teams in sports like Cricket, Tennis etc while it doesn't make a big difference(Small difference though) in some sports like NBA etc though.

[tyKiwanuka]

(...)Lets take Tennis for example. Some players are better on clay courts when compared to other players who are better on grass courts and that is a proven fact.

Home ground itself helps home teams in sports like (...), Tennis etc (...)

Well, this is something I now disagree with in regards to the topic of this thread

In tennis there is no home advantage apart from the fans when you play in your home country. Even when playing in your country, you most likely have to go all through the stress that comes with NOT being at home with your regular routines. You have the same hassle with getting/flying there, you will live in a hotel etc. as all the other players. It's just the fans - and in this topic it's about additional factors of home advantage.

And for sure, there are players that perform better on hard/clay/grass, but this is not about home advantage - it's just the surface they prefer playing on. You could argue that a lot of european outdoor tournaments are being held on clay and since most european players naturally grow up on clay, this is sort of home advantage then. US players mainly perform poor on clay, because they grow up playing on hardcourts and thus nearly all US tournaments are played on HC. Same for british players and their grass courts. But then again, not all hardcourts are the same and not all clay courts are the same. Even the balls are different, which is something the players always notice (and which amazes me ).

In tennis, you often have players, that do very well in a particular tournament though, that isn't necessarily in their home country. Carlos Moya comes to my mind, who "always" won the ATP event in Umag. Or Alison Riske is always playing Top3 tennis in Shenzhen. These athletes somehow feel at home at these tournament.

[LTU_btc]

Yes, good point. While the teams in Lithuania probably are used to change between artificial/natural grass by now, I remember some discussions regarding the Europa League, when teams that always play on natural grass had to go for an away game and play on artificial turf there. If I am not mistaken, there are some teams from Switzerland and Norway that play on artificial turf and were participants in Europa League in the past.

As I remember, Young Boys and Astana playing UEFA Champions/Europa league games, some national teams like Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Andorra, Faroe Islands play on artificial grass.
It's big advantage for home team, but actually, most players of home team would prefer to play on natural grass, they don't like plastic pitches, mainly because risk of injury is bigger. From my little experience playing on artificial pitch, it's terrible to play on it when it's hot. If air temperature is 25°C, it feels like over 40°C. And when pitch is frozen, it becomes very dangerous to play.
But UEFA allow such pitches, because not every club/national team can have natural pitch because of severe air conditions or financial reasons.