Prof Matthias Weigelt of Paderborn University, an author of the study – who is a season ticket holder at Arminia Bielefeld, a team in the German Bundesliga – said he was surprised by the findings. Without the thousands of home supporters, home advantage fell by about a third but the drop was not statistically significant, they found. In the study, researchers explored the impact of spectators on four broad categories, including home advantage (measured by the number of goals and points scored) and disciplinary sanctions (measured by fouls, yellow cards and red cards). The bans on spectators during Covid offered scientists an ideal opportunity to measure the impact of crowd support and so researchers have compared more than 1,000 professional matches played without spectators and more than 35,000 matches with a crowd across 10 professional leagues, including Spain, England and Germany during the seasons 2010-11 to 2019-20.
Researchers have long investigated the home advantage phenomenon – implicating crowd support, referee bias, psychological effects of expectations, travel fatigue, familiarity, territoriality, and tactical behaviour as factors, but there is no consensus on which are the main drivers. When Covid-19 hit, some expected that home advantage to disappear when spectators had to watch games on screens – but research suggests home teams retain a statistical advantage over their visitors. While football players sweat it out on the field, their supporters in the stadium shout and sing, giving those playing at home an advantage.
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