How best to quantify home advantage in team sports: an investigation involving male senior handball leagues in Portugal and Spain. [La mejor manera de cuantificar la ventaja de jugar en casa en deportes de equipo: una investigación con ligas de Balonmano senior masculino en Portugal y España].

Abstract

Home advantage (HA), or the effect of match location, has been shown to play an important role in determining the result of a game. A method introduced over 30 years ago has enjoyed wide use. However, there is a possible problem with its interpretation. Although this can be overcome by rescaling the original value for HA, this paper introduces a somewhat different approach to quantifying HA, one that is derived by expressing home performance specifically as a function of away performance. The various methods are illustrated by analyzing HA for teams in the men's professional handball leagues in Portugal and Spain for the 2016-17 season. Results show that the traditional and rescaled methods both ensure a maximum value of 100% for HA, while the new method can produce values well above 100%. Also, when HA is small, as in the case of goals scored and conceded, then values from the new method are about twice those from the rescaled method. However, when HA is larger, as in the case of most of the teams in the lower half of the Spanish league table, when based on points, the new method produces HA values which are much higher that the rescaled. This method provides a new dimension to consider when trying to quantify HA. It has the advantage of also being appropriate for the difference between goals scored and goals conceded. Choice of methodology will depend on the specific objective being sought when studying the effect of HA on performance.

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

“…Home advantage = ((H − A)/A) * 100%. This method [2] gives the difference between home and away points expressed as a percentage of the number of away points. It emerged because authors noticed that the obtained value with Pollard's method does not properly relate to the advantage of playing at home, and that the reference point of no home advantage should be 0% rather than 50%.…”

“…To compare home advantage before and during 2019/20 lockdown, we used two different methods to its calculation: Pollard's method [1] and Matos et al [2]. Table 1 shows results on home advantage on first 24 and last 10 rounds in each season under analysis.…”

“…Additionally, the study also aims to detect if, as pointed out before about other football leagues, home advantage in the Portuguese Football League is in a descendent trajectory throughout the last four seasons. Thus, since there is no strong reason to suppose that, in Portugal, home advantage will have a different behavior from the other professional football leagues, it is hypothesized that, as well, a descendent tendency on home advantage results over the last 4 seasons will be confirmed; (b) despite the positive (mathematic) association between Pollards' (1986) and Matos et al (2020) method, recently Matos et al [2] declared that next step would be to assess the new method in one of the main football leagues in Europe (since their study was focused on handball). Therefore, it is hypothesized that some differences may arise when comparing home advantage with one and with the other method.…”

“…A figure of 50% would mean no advantage (and no disadvantage, either) of playing at home and figures below 50% would mean home disadvantage. To overcome this constraint (and even contradiction) that represents the fact of reporting that, for instance, in a certain competition home advantage was 50% when, in fact, there was no advantage (and disadvantage) at all, Matos, Amaro and Pollard [2] proposed an alternative method. Its concept relies on determining home advantage according to the direct dependence of home performance upon away performance.…”

Conceptual Framework for the Research on Quality of Life

“…However, group dynamics research is still under research based in this multidimensional framework of sport development. The multifaceted process of competitive sport for youth and elite athletes-training monitoring, analysis of tactical behavior, and competitive games-is another line of research that should be considered [29,30].…”