Bayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-19

Abstract Home advantage in professional sports is a widely accepted phenomenon despite the lack of any controlled experiments at the professional level. The return to play of professional sports during the COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to analyze the hypothesized effect of home adv...

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Autores principales:	Nico Higgs, Ian Stavness
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/285d4368ccd14143ab9a224fe1613c99
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:285d4368ccd14143ab9a224fe1613c992021-12-02T15:33:02ZBayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-1910.1038/s41598-021-93533-w2045-2322https://doaj.org/article/285d4368ccd14143ab9a224fe1613c992021-07-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93533-whttps://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Home advantage in professional sports is a widely accepted phenomenon despite the lack of any controlled experiments at the professional level. The return to play of professional sports during the COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to analyze the hypothesized effect of home advantage in neutral settings. While recent work has examined the effect of COVID-19 restrictions on home advantage in European football, comparatively few studies have examined the effect of restrictions in the North American professional sports leagues. In this work, we infer the effect of and changes in home advantage prior to and during COVID-19 in the professional North American leagues for hockey, basketball, baseball, and American football. We propose a Bayesian multi-level regression model that infers the effect of home advantage while accounting for relative team strengths. We also demonstrate that the Negative Binomial distribution is the most appropriate likelihood to use in modelling North American sports leagues as they are prone to overdispersion in their points scored. Our model gives strong evidence that home advantage was negatively impacted in the NHL and NBA during their strongly restricted COVID-19 playoffs, while the MLB and NFL showed little to no change during their weakly restricted COVID-19 seasons.Nico HiggsIan StavnessNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-11 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Nico Higgs Ian Stavness Bayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-19
description	Abstract Home advantage in professional sports is a widely accepted phenomenon despite the lack of any controlled experiments at the professional level. The return to play of professional sports during the COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to analyze the hypothesized effect of home advantage in neutral settings. While recent work has examined the effect of COVID-19 restrictions on home advantage in European football, comparatively few studies have examined the effect of restrictions in the North American professional sports leagues. In this work, we infer the effect of and changes in home advantage prior to and during COVID-19 in the professional North American leagues for hockey, basketball, baseball, and American football. We propose a Bayesian multi-level regression model that infers the effect of home advantage while accounting for relative team strengths. We also demonstrate that the Negative Binomial distribution is the most appropriate likelihood to use in modelling North American sports leagues as they are prone to overdispersion in their points scored. Our model gives strong evidence that home advantage was negatively impacted in the NHL and NBA during their strongly restricted COVID-19 playoffs, while the MLB and NFL showed little to no change during their weakly restricted COVID-19 seasons.
format	article
author	Nico Higgs Ian Stavness
author_facet	Nico Higgs Ian Stavness
author_sort	Nico Higgs
title	Bayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-19
title_short	Bayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-19
title_full	Bayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-19
title_fullStr	Bayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed	Bayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-19
title_sort	bayesian analysis of home advantage in north american professional sports before and during covid-19
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/285d4368ccd14143ab9a224fe1613c99
work_keys_str_mv	AT nicohiggs bayesiananalysisofhomeadvantageinnorthamericanprofessionalsportsbeforeandduringcovid19 AT ianstavness bayesiananalysisofhomeadvantageinnorthamericanprofessionalsportsbeforeandduringcovid19
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Bayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-19

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