Home advantage mediated (HAM) by referee bias and team performance during covid

Abstract The fans’ importance in sports is acknowledged by the term ‘the 12th man’, a figurative extra player for the home team. Sport teams are indeed more successful when they play in front of their fans than when they play away. The supposed mechanism behind this phenomenon, termed Home Advantage...

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Autores principales:	Merim Bilalić, Bartosz Gula, Nemanja Vaci
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/326c77e19c4a4ce7846cd469eb68094a
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:326c77e19c4a4ce7846cd469eb68094a2021-11-08T10:53:47ZHome advantage mediated (HAM) by referee bias and team performance during covid10.1038/s41598-021-00784-82045-2322https://doaj.org/article/326c77e19c4a4ce7846cd469eb68094a2021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00784-8https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract The fans’ importance in sports is acknowledged by the term ‘the 12th man’, a figurative extra player for the home team. Sport teams are indeed more successful when they play in front of their fans than when they play away. The supposed mechanism behind this phenomenon, termed Home Advantage (HA), is that fans’ support spurs home players to better performance and biases referees, which in turn determines the outcome. The inference about the importance of fans’ support is, however, indirect as there is normally a 12th man of this kind, even if it is an opponent’s. The current pandemic, which forced sporting activities to take place behind closed doors, provides the necessary control condition. Here we employ a novel conceptual HA model on a sample of over 4000 soccer matches from 12 European leagues, some played in front of spectators and some in empty stadia, to demonstrate that fans are indeed responsible for the HA. However, the absence of fans reduces the HA by a third, as the home team’s performance suffers and the officials’ bias disappears. The current pandemic reveals that the figurative 12th man is no mere fan hyperbole, but is in fact the most important player in the home team.Merim BilalićBartosz GulaNemanja VaciNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-13 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Merim Bilalić Bartosz Gula Nemanja Vaci Home advantage mediated (HAM) by referee bias and team performance during covid
description	Abstract The fans’ importance in sports is acknowledged by the term ‘the 12th man’, a figurative extra player for the home team. Sport teams are indeed more successful when they play in front of their fans than when they play away. The supposed mechanism behind this phenomenon, termed Home Advantage (HA), is that fans’ support spurs home players to better performance and biases referees, which in turn determines the outcome. The inference about the importance of fans’ support is, however, indirect as there is normally a 12th man of this kind, even if it is an opponent’s. The current pandemic, which forced sporting activities to take place behind closed doors, provides the necessary control condition. Here we employ a novel conceptual HA model on a sample of over 4000 soccer matches from 12 European leagues, some played in front of spectators and some in empty stadia, to demonstrate that fans are indeed responsible for the HA. However, the absence of fans reduces the HA by a third, as the home team’s performance suffers and the officials’ bias disappears. The current pandemic reveals that the figurative 12th man is no mere fan hyperbole, but is in fact the most important player in the home team.
format	article
author	Merim Bilalić Bartosz Gula Nemanja Vaci
author_facet	Merim Bilalić Bartosz Gula Nemanja Vaci
author_sort	Merim Bilalić
title	Home advantage mediated (HAM) by referee bias and team performance during covid
title_short	Home advantage mediated (HAM) by referee bias and team performance during covid
title_full	Home advantage mediated (HAM) by referee bias and team performance during covid
title_fullStr	Home advantage mediated (HAM) by referee bias and team performance during covid
title_full_unstemmed	Home advantage mediated (HAM) by referee bias and team performance during covid
title_sort	home advantage mediated (ham) by referee bias and team performance during covid
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/326c77e19c4a4ce7846cd469eb68094a
work_keys_str_mv	AT merimbilalic homeadvantagemediatedhambyrefereebiasandteamperformanceduringcovid AT bartoszgula homeadvantagemediatedhambyrefereebiasandteamperformanceduringcovid AT nemanjavaci homeadvantagemediatedhambyrefereebiasandteamperformanceduringcovid
_version_	1718442510386200576

Home advantage mediated (HAM) by referee bias and team performance during covid

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