Abstract
Abstract The authors investigate whether the home advantage in soccer differs by various dimensions of distance between the (regions of the) home and away teams: geographical distance, climatic differences, cultural distance, and disparities in economic prosperity. To this end, the authors analyse 2,012 recent matches played in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League by means of several regression models. They find that when the home team plays at a higher altitude, they benefit substantially more from their home advantage. Every 100 meters of altitude difference is associated with an increase in expected probability to win the match, as the home team, by 1.1 percentage points. The other dimensions of distance are not significantly associated with a higher or lower home advantage. By contrast, the authors find that the home advantage in soccer is more outspoken when the number of spectators is higher and when the home team is substantially stronger than the away team.
Highlights
The home advantage in team sports is a phenomenon that has been widely studied in peerreviewed literature. Courneya and Carron (1992, p. 13) defined this home advantage in their review article as: “the consistent finding that home teams in sports competitions win over 50.0% of the matches played under a balanced home and away schedule.” More concretely, the home advantage has been documented as a key determinant of sports game outcomes in a broad range of different team sports, including American football (Pollard and Pollard, 2005b), basketball (Ribeiro et al, 2016), field hockey (Smith et al, 2000), and ice hockey (Bray, 1999)
Research on the home advantage in soccer has been conducted based on World Cup data (Torgler, 2004; Pollard and Armatas, 2017), international club competitions data (Page and Page, 2007; Poulter, 2009; Goumas, 2013, 2014b), and data on international football games played in South America (McSharry, 2007)
We investigate the association between home advantage in European international soccer and multiple perspectives of the factor of distance between home and away teams
Summary
The home advantage in team sports is a phenomenon that has been widely studied in peerreviewed literature. Courneya and Carron (1992, p. 13) defined this home advantage in their review article as: “the consistent finding that home teams in sports competitions win over 50.0% of the matches played under a balanced home and away schedule.” More concretely, the home advantage has been documented as a key determinant of sports game outcomes in a broad range of different team sports, including American football (Pollard and Pollard, 2005b), basketball (Ribeiro et al, 2016), field hockey (Smith et al, 2000), and ice hockey (Bray, 1999). The home advantage has been documented as a key determinant of sports game outcomes in a broad range of different team sports, including American football (Pollard and Pollard, 2005b), basketball (Ribeiro et al, 2016), field hockey (Smith et al, 2000), and ice hockey (Bray, 1999) This phenomenon has been studied most widely in soccer. We investigate whether home advantage in soccer is heterogeneous by (a) geographical distance (travel length and difference in altitude); (b) climatic differences (with respect to temperature and precipitation); (c) cultural distance; (d) and disparities in economic prosperity between the regions of the home and away teams, keeping heterogeneity in the home advantage by the number of spectators, the derby status of the match, the home advantage at the national competition level, and the teams’ relative strength constant. These data allow us to test, as a first study, whether or not the home advantage in international soccer matches is different in derbies and whether or not an elevated home advantage in the national leagues in the Balkan translates into a higher home advantage for Balkan teams in international matches
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