There has been a long-held belief that sports teams playing in their home court experience better performances which could be one of, if not the deciding factor in winning the game. This effect on the psyche has been termed “home-field advantage” and it’s an oft-used, well-known sports term. However, science now wants to shed some light on the phenomenon to give some empirical evidence and analytical understanding to it.
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Two researchers, Dávid Zoltán Szabó from Corvinus University of Budapest and Diego Andrés Pérez Ruiz from the University of Manchester, looked into historical data from the National Football League since 1970. They paid particular attention to the pandemic years as this provides a relevant comparative point to see the impact of “home-field advantage”.
From their study, they saw a marked difference between teams’ performances during the pandemic when no spectators were allowed inside the stadiums and how they usually performed under normal circumstances.
Of course, they didn’t consider other factors that may have affected the teams’ performances but this leads us to believe that “home-field advantage” is not simply an imaginary concept, but that, it has real psychological implications to the team and even to the audience.
Despite performing poorer than usual when no crowds were present, teams had actually performed on par when there’s even a limited number of spectators in the bleachers. Even if there was only 25% capacity in the stadium, teams noticeably performed better than when there were no spectators at all.
Not only this, but the researchers also found that having no spectators in the stadium, and instead using CGI to simulate crowds and the sounds they made, had negatively impacted the experience of TV audiences and their willingness to watch games.
This is one of the reasons why the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB saw double-digit declines in viewership during the pandemic era when teams fought in an empty venue.
So, home-field advantage is a real thing and it’s mostly attributable to psychological factors for the team as well as crowd effects, referee bias, and a self-perpetuating belief from the players of its existence.
(Image credit: Ashton Clark/Unsplash)
Source: neatorama