Abstract
Objective: To measure the impact of restrictions due to COVID on the proportion of matches won at home, away and draw in professional soccer and rugby union.Materials and Methods: Two samples of professional soccer and rugby union matches were collected from 2012–13 to 2020–21 seasons. For soccer, data involved first and second division matches of the England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Scotland, Greece, Portugal, and Turkey championships. For rugby union, championships concerned are Premiership Rugby, Celtic League, Top 14, and Pro D2. The proportions of home, away wins and draw were calculated and compared. A chi-square test of independence between years and types of result was realized to identify an overall inhomogeneity.Results: The proportion of away matches won between the 2012–13 and 2020–21 seasons increased significantly from 28.5 ± 1.2% to 32.5 ± 1.5% in soccer and from 38.0 ± 3.6% to 42.8 ± 5.0% in rugby union. In Premiership Rugby championship, the victory percentage at home dropped from 55.8 ± 3.1% when tifosi were present to 45.8 ± 12.8% when they were not.Conclusion: The home advantage was drastically reduced in empty stadiums for several European soccer and rugby union professional championships. It vanished in the Premiership Rugby and Celtic League during the 2020–21 season.
Highlights
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic (World Health Organization, 2021b)
This study revealed that the effect of the home advantage faded away with the resumption of professional soccer and rugby union championships when no spectators entered stadiums
The proportion of away matches won in the rugby union was stable for the 2012–13 to 2018–19 seasons around 36%
Summary
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic (World Health Organization, 2021b). It rapidly brought the world to a halt. On March 11, 2021, 117,573,007 cases were confirmed with 2,610,925 reported deaths (World Health Organization, 2021a). Affected countries applied varying levels of responses throughout the year, including societal restrictions and lockdown, both severely impacting societies beyond the health damages directly attributed to COVID-19. Sport was put on pause, especially elite sport (Beneke and Leithäuser, 2021). A large number of competitions were canceled or postponed, such as the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games (Gallego et al, 2020). While implementing strict health protocols, professional championships were able to resume their activities (Carmody et al, 2020; Hughes et al, 2020; Yanguas et al, 2020)
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