Components of home advantage in 157 national soccer leagues worldwide

Abstract

Comparison was made of home advantage in 157 national domestic soccer leagues throughout the world for six seasons between 2006 and 2012, a total of 169,752 games. Quantified as the number of competition points won by the home team that was expressed as a percentage of all points gained in the league, the advantage was present in all continents, but showed considerable variation between countries. It was by far the highest in Nigeria (86.82%), followed by Bosnia-Herzegovina, Guatemala, Indonesia, Algeria, Bolivia and Ghana, all between 70% and 80%. Regionally, there were pockets of high home advantage in the Andes, the Balkans, West Africa and Central America, while in the Baltic republics and in most of the Arabian Peninsula it was low. A multivariate model was developed by using proxy variables for the main explanations of home advantage and its worldwide variation. After controlling for the competitive balance in each league, significant predictors of home advantage were: Fédération Internationale de Football Association ranking (a proxy for crowd support), the maximum geographical distance between teams, the majority of teams coming from a single city, at least two teams playing at a high altitude, the recent occurrence of a civil war and the Corruption Perception Index. The model accounted for 43% of the variability in home advantage, the rest of which needs to be investigated after developing more precise measures for territoriality, the ethnic and cultural factors involved and the potential for referee bias.