Home-Advantage during COVID-19: An Analysis in Portuguese Football League

Abstract

Covid-19 pandemic forced, at the final rounds of 2019–2020 season, in many different sport leagues worldwide, teams to play without an audience. Therefore, the present paper aims to compare the home advantage score in the last ten rounds in 2019–2020 season with the first 24 rounds in same season using Pollard’s (1986) and Matos et al.’s (2020) methods. In addition, comparisons across different seasons (2016–2017; 2017–2018; 2018–2019 and 2019–2020) using the same methods were also analyzed. Results showed no differences (p > 0.05) between first 24 rounds and the last 10 in 2019–2020 season as well as in the 3 previous seasons. With Pollard’s method, no differences (p > 0.05) were also found among those four seasons on global (all 34 rounds) home advantage. However, a significance difference between 2017–2018 and 2019–2020 (p < 0.05) was founded using Matos et al.’s (2020) method, which is an indicator of the importance of using complementary methods when analyzing the same realities. Overall, despite what might be expectable from recent findings, the lack of an audience in the last 10 rounds of Portuguese Football League 2019–2020 season, due to COVID-19 pandemic, did not affect home advantage. Therefore, future studies could try to analyze other different variables in Portuguese Football League, such as referees’ behaviors, rules changing (e.g., the possibility of making five substitutions, instead of three), crowd dimension and density as well as include variables about odds as forecasts in football being played without crowds.

Did the Absence of Crowd Support During the Covid-19 Pandemic Affect the Home Advantage in Brazilian Elite Soccer?

“…In general, our findings differ from those found by Tilp and Thaller (2020) who reported an inversion of home advantage due to the absence of fans in the Bundesliga in the 2019/20 season. On the other hand, our findings are in agreement with Matos et al (2021) who also did not report reductions in HA in the Portuguese soccer league due to the lack of crowd support associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall, our results contradict the logic that the absence of support from the fans would act by reducing HA ( Inan, 2020 ).…”

“…Those authors attributed both factors to the absence of social pressure and noise produced by the crowd. Conversely, Matos et al (2021) examined HA in the Portuguese major soccer league and did not find changes due to the absence of the crowd, either in the comparison with games from the 2019/2020 season or in the comparison with previous seasons. Almeida and Leite (2021) also reported divergent results for several European leagues due to the absence of crowds in the stadiums.…”

A complete season with attendance restrictions confirms the relevant contribution of spectators to home advantage and referee bias in association football

“…This observation was further confirmed in a systematic literature review by Leitner et al (2022) , who identified 26 studies that analyzed the last portion of the 2019–20 season, when all matches were played behind closed doors. Out of these 26 studies, only six did not observe a significant and consistent overall decrease of the home advantage and referee bias in the considered leagues ( Almeida & Werlayne, 2021 ; Benz & Lopez, 2021 ; Krawczyk & Strawinski, 2020 ; Matos et al, 2021 ; Ramchandani & Millar, 2021 ; Wunderlich et al, 2021 ), while the other 20 ones did observe a significant decrease of these phenomena ( Bryson et al, 2021 ; Correia-Oliveira & Andrade-Souza, 2021 ; Cross & Uhrig, 2020 ; Cueva, 2020 ; Dilger & Vischer, 2020 ; Endrich & Gesche, 2020 ; Ferraresi & Gucciardi, 2020 , 2021 ; Fischer & Haucap, 2020 ; Hill & Van Yperen, 2021 ; Jimenez Sanchez & Lavin, 2021 ; Konaka, 2021 ; Leitner & Richlan, 2021a ; Link & Anzer, 2021 ; McCarrick et al, 2021 ; Rovetta & Abate, 2021 ; Santana, Bettega & Dellagrana, 2021 ; Scoppa, 2021 ; Sors et al, 2021 ; Tilp & Thaller, 2020 ). Considering exclusively the peer-reviewed, multi-leagues studies, they found that nine out of 13 studies observed such a decrease ( Bryson et al, 2021 ; Correia-Oliveira & Andrade-Souza, 2021 ; Ferraresi & Gucciardi, 2021 ; Hill & Van Yperen, 2021 ; Jimenez Sanchez & Lavin, 2021 ; Leitner & Richlan, 2021a ; McCarrick et al, 2021 ; Scoppa, 2021 ; Sors et al, 2021 ).…”

No Fans–No Pressure: Referees in Professional Football During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Other (and also fewer) studies conclude that the home advantage effect did not change considerably during ghost games (Benz and Lopez, 2020;Almeida and Leite, 2021;Matos et al, 2021). Almeida and Leite (2021) emphasize that the effect of home advantage during the COVID-19 pandemic depends on the analysis level (individual league or across leagues) and that "[.…”