Home advantage
This benefit has been attributed to psychological effects supporting fans have on the competitors or referees; to psychological or physiological advantages of playing near home in familiar situations; to the disadvantages away teams suffer from changing time zones or climates, or from the rigors of travel; and in some sports, to specific rules that favor the home team directly or indirectly.
It is also common to hold important games, such as the Super Bowl, at a neutral site in which the location is determined years in advance.
However, as it is usually beneficial to have an odd number of matches in a series (to prevent ties), the final home game is often awarded to the team that had more success over the regular season.
[2] (However, having home court did not help Canada at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the only Summer Games at which the hosting country failed to win a single gold medal.)
[clarification needed] In recognition of the difficulty in winning away matches, cup competitions in association football often invoke the away goals rule.
There are many causes that attribute to home advantage, such as crowd involvement (for instance a 2024 study[4] on ice hockey results during COVID-19, where no spectators were allowed at matches), travel considerations, and environmental factors.
That can make it very difficult for the visiting team's quarterback to call audible play changes, or for any player to hear the snap count.
The home fans can sometimes create a psychological lift by cheering loudly for their team when good things happen in the game.
In addition, stadium/arena light shows, sound effects, fireworks, cheerleaders, and other means to enliven the crowd will be in support of the home team.
Ryan Boyko, a research assistant in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, studied 5,000 English Premier League games from 1992 to 2006, to discern any officiating bias and the influence of home crowds.
The data was published in the Journal of Sports Sciences and suggested that for every additional 10,000 people attending, home team advantage increased by 0.1 goals.
The low humidity also causes baseballs to dry out, making it harder for pitchers to grip them and further reducing their ability to throw breaking balls.
The unique off-white Teflon-coated roof of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome trapped and reflected noise to such an extent that it was distracting or even harmful.
Memorial Gymnasium, the venue for men's and women's basketball at Vanderbilt University, was built in 1952 with the team benches at the ends of the court instead of along one of the sidelines, a setup that was not unusual at the time.
However, the configuration is now unique in U.S. major-college sports, and has been said to give the Commodores an edge because opposing coaches are not used to directing their teams from the baseline.
Goalkeepers, the last line of defense, have particularly strong testosterone changes when playing against a bitter rival as compared to a training season.
Paul Doyle ascribed this to visiting teams' facing "violent crowds, questionable refereeing and [...] [a]rriving just before kick-off after long road trips, often on hazardous surfaces".
[10] The 2020–21 NHL season saw major disruption due to COVID-19-restricted conditions that resulted in bubble playoffs and ghost games, as fans were unable to attend in person.
The centre who is allowed to place his stick last gains the ability to time the face-off better and gives him greater odds of winning it.
Goals scored and conceded – in so called combined measure of home team advantage – are used to determine which results are better, same, and which are worse.
[18] Marek and Vávra (2018)[19] described procedure which allows to use observed counts of combined measure of home team advantage (
During the regular season for a sport, in the interest of fairness, schedulers try to ensure that each team plays an equal number of home and away games.
As an example, in the 1982 NBA Finals, the Los Angeles Lakers played the Philadelphia 76ers, with the 76ers having earned home court advantage because of a better regular season record.
Most recently Bayern Munich played (and lost) the 2012 final at their home stadium of Allianz Arena, as it was chosen as the venue in January 2010.
The next year saw the Los Angeles Rams play Super Bowl LVI at their home of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
The following week, the Vikings' Monday Night Football game against the Chicago Bears was moved to the University of Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium.
[25] For example, after the violent clashes after the Turkey-Switzerland game in 2005, UEFA punished the Turkish team with playing the next six regular international home matches abroad.
The latter consideration is uncommon because governing bodies typically implement measures to prevent national teams from jurisdictions with the most serious political disputes (for example, Spain and Gibraltar or Serbia and Kosovo) from being drawn in the same group, but it does happen - for example, the Ukraine–Kosovo qualifier game for the 2018 World Championships was held in Krakow, Poland, because Ukraine does not recognize Kosovo and does not admit Kosovar nationals to its territory.
The 2020 NFL season, played in empty and near-empty stadiums, was the first in which no significant advantage was recorded: home teams that year finished 127–128–1 (.498).
They were soon followed by the Calgary Flames, who with their five-game loss to the Colorado Avalanche, ensured that for the first time in NHL history,[32] neither of the conference number one seeds advanced to the second round.
