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Home Field Advantage? What’s Really Behind Home Field Advantage? In almost every sport, everywhere on earth, the vIsItIng team loses more often than not. you probably thInk you know why. and you’re probably wrong by tobIas j. moskowItz and l. jon wertheIm illustration by sean mccabe or all the conventional sports wisdom that can be deconstructed, disproved or called into question, home team advantage is no myth. Indisputably, it exists—and it’s remarkably consistent. Across all sports and at all levels, from Japanese baseball to Brazilian soccer to the NFL, the team hosting a game wins more often than not. The size of the advantage is remarkably stable in each sport too: The home team’s success rate has been almost exactly the same in the last decade as it was 50 and even 100 years ago. And home field advantage is the samewithin any sport, no matter where it is played. The home winning percentage in Arena Football is Fessentially the same as in the NFL. The home field advantage in the Not only do NBA is a virtual carbon copy of that in the WNBA. In professional soc- home teams cer, the sport with the greatest home field advantage, the host teams in win more often, but the three of Europe’s most popular leagues—England’s Premiership, Spain’s success rate in La Liga and Italy’s Serie A—win about 65% of the time. In 40 other soccer each sport has also remained leagues in 24 countries, the home field advantage hovers around 63%. consistent In the NBA an astounding 98.6% of teams fare better at home over the last than on the road. That means that in most seasons all NBA teams decade—and even the last have better home than road records. In hockey and soccer, more than century. 90% of the teams win more at home than on the road. Even in the january 17, 2011 | SportS IlluSt r at eD SportS IlluStrated 01/17/2011 ScorecaSt.l/o leFt PAGe 64/1 oF 2 SportS IlluStrated 01/17/2011 ScorecaSt.l/o righT PAGe 65/1 oF 2 Version:33 01/09/2011 1108pM kerr hunt sun Version:33 01/09/2011 1108pM kerr hunt sun a.d./ext: Zamora/x0000 Statushere: 01/09/2011 08:23pM liana Zamora a.d./ext: Zamora/x0000 Statushere: 01/09/2011 08:23pM liana Zamora revise comments: FINAL ART oK revise comments: FINAL ART oK ±local read± ±conference± ±art approval± ±HOLD:updates/checks ±HOLD:art ±local read± ±conference± ±art approval± ±HOLD:updates/checks ±HOLD:art Home Field AdvAntAge NFL and major league baseball, the leagues away teams won 316 (50.6%). In other words, each other—such as when the Lakers face with the lowest home winning percentages, for shootouts—held when you’d expect the the Clippers (who share their NBA arena), or more than 75% of teams do better at home. crowd to be especially involved—the NHL’s when the NHL’s Rangers play the Islanders: It’s little wonder, then, that leagues reward significant home ice advantageevaporates . The designated home teams have the exact zu ma P previous spread: the best teams in the regular season with In the NFL we could look at punters and same advantage they do in all the other games ress.com ( home field advantage in the playoffs—it’s kickers. But it turns out that yards per punt they host. Likewise, road teams don’t lose a hell of an incentive to win those dreary are identical for home and visiting punters more often when they travel greater distances. f r a ncesco midseason games. There is also considerable (about 41.5 yards). Likewise, field goal suc- In baseball, too, in games involving teams Pal Pillai/Getty economic incentive for home teams to win as cess from the same distance and extra-point from the same metro area (interleague play often as possible. The better the home team accuracy are identical for kickers at home between the Cubs and White Sox, Yankees t plays, the more likely fans are to buy tickets and on the road (about 72%). Of course, and Mets, Dodgers and Angels, Giants and ot t i); Gre and hats and T-shirts and renew their luxury- you could question whether punters and A’s), the home teams win at exactly the same i ma G G suite leases; the more likely corporations are kickers have the ball long enough to be af- rate at which they normally do. The fact that es ( n el son ( to buy sponsorships; and the more likely local fected by a rabid crowd. O.K., then, let’s take home field advantage has been remarkably s achin television networks are to bid for rights fees. quarterbacks. Extreme crowd noise might be constant over the last century—it was virtu- a t ndy That the home field advantage exists is expected to distract visiting quarterbacks, ally the same in MLB from 1903 to ’09 as it endulkar); d a rvish); d undeniable. But why does it exist? but actually it doesn’t seem to. In fact, visiting was from 2003 to ’09—suggests that teams alton); Winslo It’s not for the reasons you might think. teams pass slightly better than home teams. jetting on chartered flights have no more e l l a ine In baseball the closest we can come to success than the teams that traveled to games o u [ myth #1 ] c measuring the crowd’s influence is to exam- in Pullmans. a P t W oz zol a ( hom Home teams Win Because tHeir croWds ine the pitcher. Not his ball-strike count— Nor does travel play much of a role in the t o P W son/ Boost players’ perFormance influenced , as it is, by the batter, the umpire NFL’s home field advantage. Teams play nson/ a le x It’s reasonable to think that you play better and the game situation— but his velocity, only one game per week and in fact usually a P ( a P ( l o when you’re cheered, your favorite songs movement and placement. Data from the depart for a game a few days in advance to auren Jackson); vechkin); Jeff t blare on the P.A. system and your pregame MLB.com technology Pitch f/x, tracking acclimate themselves. As in the other sports, om b introduction is accompanied by fireworks. more than two million pitches over the last when nearby teams play—Raiders versus r a dy); But fans’ influence on the players is actually three years, show that major league pitchers 49ers, Giants versus Jets, Ravens versus d z o u elevansky/Getty pretty small. How do we know this? One of are as accurate at home as they are on the Redskins—the home field advantage holds d G avid the problems with testing the effect of crowd road, throwing a ball within the strike zone firm at its normal level. Ja mes/ r support is that almost every feat in team 44.3% of the time at home and 44.5% of the o G i con sports is a function of not only the player and time on the road. They also throw with the [ myth #3 ] ers/Get t y SMI the crowd but also the player’s teammates, same velocity—87 mph on average when i Home teams Win Because ( ma r od Windsor); G i ma the defender, the defender’s teammates and the ball crosses the plate—and movement. tHey BeneFit From a kinder, gentler scHedule es ( G k the referee. How do we isolate the crowd ef- We can also use the Pitch f/x data to help In the NBA the vast majority of back-to-back es ( y le i fect? We need to look at an area of the game gauge whether playing at home has any im- games are played by visiting teams, which is sr a el s in G divorced from all the other factors, such as pact on batters. The data show that when a exhausting for the players. Could that help b ler); John W. r a d d a free throws. Free throws are an isolated in- player swings at a pitch, in or out of the strike create home court advantage? Yes. Of the 20 gg m a n teraction between one player—the shooter— zone, his probability of hitting the ball is ex- or so back-to-back games NBA teams play ); a G ndre and the crowd that is trying to distract him. actly the same at home and away. Hey-batter- each season, an average of 14 are on the in ( t m im W c Over the last two decades in the NBA, batter-batter-swing? Sorry. He’s going to do it road. By our calculations, teams win only d y l ono u at es/ encompassing more than 23,000 games, just as well whether you’re chattering or not. 36% of those 14 games. That translates into incecum); Geor G a f the free throw percentage of visiting teams one or two additional games that teams lose h ( P/Get t y myth #2 k has been 75.9%, and that of home teams has [ ] each season on the road. obe b G been . 75.9%. Are these shooting percent- Home teams Win Because tHe rigors It’s not just back-to-back games, either. rya nt); e i ma h oll a nd/ ages any different at different points in the oF travel doom visitors Home teams generally have more off days G es (Way ne l game—say, during the fourth quarter or in The rigors of the road exist, of course, but within the same time span, such as the last lu is Gene / overtime, when the score is tied? No.
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