Covid-19 Has Turned Home Advantage Into Home Disadvantage in the German Soccer Bundesliga

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Markus Tilp¹, Sigrid Thaller¹

¹Institute of Human Movement Science, Sport and Health, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.

Frontiers in Sports and Active Living

|December 21, 2020

Insights

The COVID-19 pandemic

Area of Science:

Sports Science
Sociology
Pandemic Studies

Background:

Home advantage (HA) in soccer is traditionally linked to crowd support, familiarity, and travel fatigue.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to the German Soccer Bundesliga playing matches without spectators, creating a unique research opportunity.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the impact of spectator absence on home advantage, referee decisions, and game outcomes in professional soccer.
To analyze differences in fouls, disciplinary cards, and game results between games with and without audience.

Main Methods:

Comparative analysis of 223 games with audience (GWA) and 83 games without audience (GWOA) from the 2019/20 Bundesliga season.
Inclusion of all games from the preceding 2018/19 season for baseline comparison.
Statistical analysis of game outcomes, fouls, disciplinary cards (yellow and red), and penalty kicks.

Main Results:

Home advantage significantly decreased in games without audience (44.1%) compared to games with audience (54.35%) and the previous season (57.63%).
Fouls and disciplinary cards showed a more balanced distribution in games without audience, unlike games with audience.
More home losses than home wins were observed in the spectator-free rounds, indicating a home disadvantage.

Conclusions:

The absence of spectators due to COVID-19 resulted in a significant reduction in home advantage in the German Soccer Bundesliga.
The familiar aspect of crowd support appears crucial for maintaining home advantage, and its absence may even motivate away teams.
This study highlights the substantial psychological and social impact of spectators on team performance and officiating in professional sports.

Read full analysis

Abstract:

The main factors for home advantage (HA), quantified by the number of points won at home expressed as a percentage of all points, are believed to be crowd support, territoriality, familiarity, and travel fatigue. In 2020, the German Soccer Bundesliga interrupted its championship due to the Covid-19 pandemic after 25 rounds and the last nine rounds were played without audience. This unique situation allowed studying the effect of spectators on the team's performance and the referee's decisions. We hypothesized a decrease in HA and a more balanced distribution of fouls and disciplinary cards in the games without audience (GWOA) compared to the games with audience (GWA). We evaluated n = 223 GWA and n = 83 GWOA of the season 2019/20 and all games of the preceding season 2018/19 to analyze the distribution of game outcomes (wins, losses, and draws) and HA. We analyzed the number of fouls, disciplinary cards, and penalty kicks. We found significant differences in HA between GWA (HA = 54.35%) and GWOA (HA = 44.1%) as well as GWOA and games of 2018/19 (HA = 57.63%). The distribution of game outcomes in GWOA did not differ from GWA but differed significantly from 2018/19 (p = 0.031). The distribution of fouls showed a significant difference to equal distribution in GWA [home: 2,595 (48.56%); away: 2,749 (51.44%)] but not in GWOA [home: 1,067 (50.54%); away: 1,044 (49.46%)]. In the GWOA, we counted 178 (51.1%, home) and 170 (48.9%, away) cards, representing a significant difference in the distribution to GWA [home: 405 (44.85%); away: 498 (55.15%)]. The number of red cards differed significantly from an equal distribution for GWA (14 home and 28 away) but not for GWOA (eight home and seven away). In the last nine rounds without audience, we observed more home losses (36) than home wins (27). Hence, the Covid-19 lock-down led to a home disadvantage. One reason for this surprising result could be that the home team is missing an important familiar aspect when playing in their empty stadium without social support from their home audience. Furthermore, both teams know about the HA thus the away team could be more motivated in this unusual situation.

Keywords:

crowd support familiarity referee home bias team performance travel fatigue

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