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

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, European elite football (a.k.a. soccer) leagues played the remaining season 2019/20 without or strongly limited attendance of supporters (i.e., “ghost games”). From a sport psychological perspective this situation poses a unique opportunity to investigate the crowd's influence on referee decisions and the associated effect of “home advantage.” A total of 1286 matches–played in the top leagues of Spain, England, Germany, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Austria and the Czech Republic–were analyzed for results, fouls, bookings and reasons for bookings and contrasted between respective matchdays of season 2018/19 (regular attendance) and season 2019/20 (ghost games). Following recent methodological developments in the research on the home advantage effect, four different statistical analyses–including Pollard's traditional method–were used for the assessment of the home advantage effect. There are two main findings. First, home teams were booked significantly more often with yellow cards for committing fouls in ghost games. Most importantly, this effect was independent of the course of the games. In contrast, bookings for other reasons (criticism and unfair sportsmanship) changed similarly for both home and away teams in ghost games. Second, the overall home performance and home advantage effect in the respective elite leagues–identified in the respective matches of the regular 2018/19 season–vanished in the ghost games of the 2019/20 season. We conclude that the lack of supporters in top European football during the COVID-19 pandemic led to decreased social pressure from the ranks on referees, which also had a potential impact on the home advantage. Referees assessed the play of home teams more objectively, leading to increased yellow cards awarded for fouls committed by the home teams. Since there were no significant changes in referee decisions against the away teams, we argue that our observations reflect a reduction of unconscious favoritism of referees for the home teams.

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 ).…”

The cauldron has cooled down: a systematic literature review on home advantage in football during the COVID-19 pandemic from a socio-economic and psychological perspective

“…Besides qualitative interviews and self-report questionnaires, a promising approach was recently put forward by Leitner and Richlan ( 2021b ). Their “Analysis System for Emotional Behavior in Football “ (ASEB-F) is a video-based categorical analysis system of nonverbal behavior during football matches.…”

“…In addition to economic issues, such as the viability of clubs without spectator revenues, the changed stadium atmosphere is particularly striking. Early in the pandemic, there was anecdotal evidence that the behavior of players changed, e.g., toward referees, and recent studies indicate that the missing crowd indeed has an impact on the (nonverbal) behavior of players, staff and referees (Leitner and Richlan 2021b ). Since games without spectators were played in almost all European leagues from mid-2020 at the latest, the situation can be compared to a natural experiment.…”

Influence of crowd size on home advantage in the Japanese football league

“…These focus on the degree of deviation from the winning percentage of 50% (Matos et al, 2020). Researchers have highlighted that HA is consistently seen in regular season football league matches (Almeida and Leite, 2021;Leitner and Richlan, 2021). Courneya and Carron (1992) have cited four major game location factors thought to affect the degree of HA: (1) learning/familiarity factors; (2) rule factors; (3) travel factors; (4) crowd factors.…”

“…Crowd factors relate to crowd density affecting the mental state of the home team, causing changes in the players' actions/behaviors and performances and bringing about HA consequently (Agnew and Carron, 1994). Other than exerting a direct influence on the players, crowd factors are perceived to influence the referees' decisions (Leitner and Richlan, 2021;Wunderlich et al, 2021). In both cases, the anticipated processes are the crowd's behaviors of cheering and supporting the home team and/or booing the away team, which creates an advantageous environment for the home team and the contrary for the away team.…”