Home advantage in European international soccer: which dimension of distance matters?

Abstract

The authors investigate whether the home advantage in soccer differs by various dimensions of distance between the (regions of the) home and away teams: geographical distance, climatic differences, cultural distance, and disparities in economic prosperity. To this end, the authors analyse 2,012 recent matches played in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League by means of several regression models. They find that when the home team plays at a higher altitude, they benefit substantially more from their home advantage. Every 100 meters of altitude difference is associated with an increase in expected probability to win the match, as the home team, by 1.1 percentage points. The other dimensions of distance are not significantly associated with a higher or lower home advantage. By contrast, the authors find that the home advantage in soccer is more outspoken when the number of spectators is higher and when the home team is substantially stronger than the away team.

How the COVID-19 Pandemic has Changed the Game of Soccer

“…The sample comprises all matches of German professional soccer in the Bundesliga (BL) and Bundesliga 2 (BL2) during the seasons 2017/18, 2018/19, and 2019/20 (TOTAL). In order to consider potential seasonal influences, we divided the seasons into four quarters: Q1 (round 1-9), Q2 (round 10-17), Q3 (round [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], and Q4 (round [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Analysis of home advantage uses subsample PRECORONA containing all matches of seasons 2017/18, 2018/19 and Q1-Q3 of 2019/20 before the coronavirus season break as a baseline.…”

Competitive Balance and the Away Goals Rule During Extra Time

“…In this sense, the away goals rule contributes to those sporting rules which create a dual incentive problem, see Preston and Szymanski (2003) or Price et al (2010): Initially designed to increase the effort to win the contest, these rules can lead teams to undesired tactical behavior. For this phenomenon in specific sports, see e.g., Kendall and Lenten (2017), and especially for soccer, see Zhao and Zhang (2021 Courneya and Carron (1991); Nevill and Holder (1999) or Pollard and Pollard (2005) for surveys in sports in general and Clarke and Norman (1995); Pollard (1986;2006;2008); Carmichael and Thomas (2005); Clarke (2005), Pollard and Gómez (2014a;2014b), Ponzo and Scoppa (2018), Van Damme and Baert (2018), for evidence in professional soccer. For a discussion of the causes that attribute to the home-field advantage see Jost (2021b).…”

Twelve eyes see more than eight. Referee bias and the introduction of additional assistant referees in soccer

“…As can be seen in Panel A of Table 1, a yellow card is awarded to a home team in approximately one minute out of fifty, while an away team receives a yellow card in one minute out of forty. We investigated whether this home advantage in receiving yellow cards is related to referee bias (versus whether it is fully explained by other reasons for a home advantage; [30,33,41]).…”

“…Consequently, we needed to control for the higher probability of a player receiving a yellow card in a derby. Because all games in our dataset are international, like [41], we define a derby as a game between two teams from the same country.…”