Ann Appl Sport Sci 8(3): e806, 2020. http://www.aassjournal.com; e-ISSN: 2322–4479; p-ISSN: 2476–4981. 10.29252/aassjournal.806 ORIGINAL ARTICLE The Effect of Crowd Support on Home-Field Advantage: Evidence from European Football Tuğbay Inan* Faculty of Sport Sciences, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey. Submitted 07 October 2019; Accepted in final form 21 January 2020. ABSTRACT Background. Home field advantage exists in all professional games including professional football. Studies have revealed persistent home advantage across countries and divisions. Although crowd effects have regularly been cited as one of the potential causes of home advantage, the effect of crowd size and crowd density on home advantage has not been demonstrated in any football league. Objectives. The aim of this study was to demonstrate this effect using a new theoretical framework and binary logistic regression. Methods. Data collected for four seasons of five major European Leagues was processed. For this reason, 4 seasons and n = 8530 matches were analyzed starting from 2015 to 2019. Results. The model results suggest the presence of home-field advantage for all major European Leagues with varying degrees and varying shares attributable to the crowd support and crowd density. Conclusion. In the present study, it was found that crowd support and crowd density are of great importance for home-field advantage. KEYWORDS: Home Advantage, European Football, Crowd Effects, Crowd Size, Crowd Density, Soccer INTRODUCTION Conventional wisdom of players, coaches, ongoing research in sports economics. The factors commentators and fans declares that in leading to the home field advantage and how professional team sports, home side has an these factors affect the outcome of a game have advantage. Regardless of country and division of yet not been well understood. league, including international games, home field Dowie was the first to apply the concept to advantage can be seen. Major professional team soccer and came forward with three possible sports in England and North America have all causes. He mentioned fatigue, familiarity and been studied with this perspective and the results fans, however he did not reach clear-cut have confirmed this finding (1). Moreover, a conclusions (3). paper by Pollard and Gomez studied 157 national The 1986 study of Pollard set the most soccer leagues and found that the advantage commonly used system to analyze home persists in all continents (2). Home advantage is advantage. Home field advantage has since been valid for the long term as well. Inan applied expressed by the percentage of points gained or Pollard’s methodology to 30 seasons of the goals scored at home with respect to total points Turkish Super League and found that home gained or total goals scored. Pollard summarized advantage was present in all seasons (3) the likely causes as local crowd support, travel The exact causes of home advantage are still fatigue, familiarity with local conditions, referee an issue of investigation and an important topic of bias, special tactics and psychological factor (1) *. Corresponding Author: Tuğbay Inan, Ph.D E-mail: [email protected] 2 Effect of Crowd Support on Home Field Advantage .Pollard later added territoriality and rule factors analyzed in the same manner with special tactics to the likely causes (4). Other causes may also and physiological factors. Home advantage may come into play. Marek & Vavra used a different to some extent be a self-perpetuating approach by using goals, instead of points gained, phenomenon. Because teams expect to do better and compared home field advantage in different in home turf, or because they believe they should leagues (5). Different studies have tried to dissect play well in their home city, in front of their own various causes and found all to be effective to fans, they do better. They adopt different tactics different degrees. One notable exception is the or act more aggressively hoping that the referee, rule factor. Starting with 1980s, the system where under crowd pressure, will be more lenient. This 2 points was awarded to the winner and 1 point to feeling of having to do better may be heightened both teams in the case of draw was changed because of political issues, usually analyzed throughout the world and 3 points started to be under territoriality. awarded to winners. Moreover all leagues use the Referee bias in favor of the home team has same rules. Therefore rule factors were been well established (21). Boyko et al., meaningful before but have now become obsolete examined 5244 English Premier League (EPL) (2). match results including 50 referees and found that Travel effects performance of the teams referees cause for some part of the observed home negatively. Pollard, Silva, & Medeiros found that advantage in the EPL, though home bias differs the length of the travel decreases the performance between referees (22). Lovell, Newell, & Parker in soccer games in Brazil (6). In international also showed referee bias does exist, even that may games, jet lag may take a toll. Another possible be the main reason for home advantage (17). Even factor is the impact of travel on sleep and food. though referee bias is deemed as a determinant for The mode of travel, ie. Plane, train or bus and the home-field advantage, yet that should be taken as quality of accommodation may all have negative a result at the intermediary stage in a sequential effects. Many people would prefer to sleep at process which is triggered by the crowd. In this home in his own bed rather than in a hotel. These regard, the presence of crowd noise influenced are all questions yet to be analyzed in depth. Just referees’ decisions to favor the home team, the opposite, in local derbies, home advantage observed by Nevill, Balmer, and Williams (18). decreases. Some of this is probably because of Anders and Rotthoff showed that the home lack of travel fatigue, rest may come from more advantage was greater in teams with greater balanced support. Seckin and Pollard found that prospect of fan violence (23). However, the home advantage was significantly lower in dynamics still need exploration. This may be a Istanbul derbies, where teams based in Istanbul very human reaction to crowd support but played against each other (7). London Clarke & corruption, gambling interests and fear of Norman, Lisbon, Paris, Madrid and Milan Pollard violence from home team supporters may all play & Gomez, have all been shown as examples a role. It is not easy if even possible to study these Seçkin and Pollard also tried to assess home effects. However, crowd effect has been paid advantage for several teams in remote locations attention recently to investigate further. by considering travel fatigue and territoriality as Home teams show more performance, visiting potential factors here (1-5, 8-20). The study found teams less, referees may show bias towards home that especially in Van, Rize and Diyarbakır, home team, of course, yet that is stemming mainly from advantage was higher than average, with Van crowd support. Boudreaux, Sanders, & Walia having the most advantage (7). As athletes are examined the crowd effect upon home field thought to lose performance at altitudes higher advantage, and found that is quite meaningful for than 1,500 meters, it is probably not coincidental motivating home team to win and almost entire that Van has an altitude of over 1,700 meters, home advantage is attributable to the crowd effect although other factors may also have been (24). If we take a closer look at the crowd affect influential (21). in home advantage, its size, intensity, density and Familiarity with local conditions works for the proximity can be expected to affect both teams home team. An interesting study has shown that and the referees (21) home advantage decreases when a team moves to Intensity and Density: Greer analyzed the a new stadium (16). Territoriality is a rather effect of “booing” on team performances in subjective cause as well. We believe it can be American College Basketball and reached the Effect of Crowd Support on Home Field Advantage 3 conclusion that booing adversely effected the divide the determinants of home field average performance of the visiting team (13) the size of points in two categories: The factors crowd size, the crowd, which is the focus of this study, is an and crowd density that are directly related to indicator of the booing potential. However, the playing at home game by each team in each effect on booing may not be similar in match. An elaboration of this theoretical professional games, mainly because those teams framework is presented in Figure 1. contain relatively older and more experienced Indeed, performance indicators at home games players compared to college teams. Hence they and other capability indicators are important would be expected to be effected less by the indicators showing the capability of a team to booing. Moreover, the dynamics and venues of affect the outcome of a match even without any basketball are not the same as football. Therefore, crowd support. The crowd size and crowd density caution is advised in making comparisons. will also be present in the home games and Size: It should be noted that magnitude of contribute to the points gained at home. The more home advantage varies a lot among countries capable a team is, the more points it is expected (21). Interestingly, past research has shown that to gain at home even in the lack of crowd support home advantage does not vary much among and any other related home field advantage. And divisions of the same league, although crowd we may decompose the magnitude of the actual sizes differ a lot (25).