The Impact of Home-Field Advantage on MLB Playoffs

One reason for this could be that Belém, where Paysandu is based, is the furthest location from any other team in Brazil – over 1000km away from its nearest neighbor. However, the study cautioned that differences in climatic conditions might also be playing a confounding role. Studies have shown that the magnitude of home advantage in soccer varies depending on a variety of factors, including the level of competition, the quality of the teams involved, and the game location. For instance, one study by Nevill & Holder (1999) examined data from over 40,493 soccer matches and found that home teams won 68.3% of their games. Soccer shows the strongest home advantage among major sports, with teams winning up to 69.1% of home games in some leagues.

• The favored team has to win by more than the spread for bets on them to cash, while the underdog can either win outright or lose by less than the spread to cover their bets.
• The comfort of familiarity with the ballpark often plays a more crucial role.
• Major betting corporations now recruit directly from finance programs for their quantitative analysis departments.
• The Balkan nations of southeastern Europe, especially Albania and Bosnia, have shown a larger home advantage than elsewhere (e.g., Baltic republics, Scandinavia, and the British Isles).
• When home advantage temporarily changed during events like pandemic-era games with empty stadiums, betting markets had to adjust.

This is also not a statistically significant difference, which further suggests that official scorers are probably not all that biased. To me, this suggests that chances are that defenses perform worse on the road. Home advantage has been a great topic of research in the field of football match performance analysis, and many progress have been made 57, 58. However, with the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, spectators were forbidden to enter the stadium, which provided a natural experiment to examine the crowd effect. In this condition, it may contribute to gaining a comprehensive understanding of the role of crowds in football matches.

Initially, we discovered that home-field advantage was particularly strong in the early innings. While this may be a factor, it is probably just as likely that the defense can adjust their fielders (e.g., “no-doubles defense”) in such a way to play one-run defensive strategies to their own advantage. Therefore, it is not at all clear that a late-game effect is a significant portion of home-field advantage.

Links to NCBI Databases

During the pandemic, many sporting events were held without fans, creating what became known as “ghost games.” These empty-stadium matches revealed striking changes in home field advantage patterns. The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique opportunity to study home field advantage when fans were removed from the equation. Research shows that the absence of spectators significantly reduced home advantage across sports. Three-point heavy play, smoother travel, and better scouting helped road teams catch up. Certain teams still get bigger bumps (altitude, tough crowds), and back-to-backs can change things, but the league-wide number has drifted down. When stadiums went quiet in 2020–2021, researchers got a rare test of home-field advantage without fans.

Is Home Field Advantage in Soccer Real?

Official scorers, or so the accusation goes, give the home team credit for hits more often while recording as errors close calls involving road players. This may or may not be true, but it is highly doubtful that the reverse is true. Therefore, that home teams reach on error in 1.46 percent of their balls in play, and road teams on 1.42 percent implies that players on the road are fielding more poorly. The ratio of infield hits to the sum of infield hits and times reached on error is 70.3 percent for home teams and 69.8 percent for road teams.

The NFL is adored around the globe for its excitement and unpredictability – whatever the weather. In fact, some of the most entertaining games have taken place in the worst possible conditions. Just look back to the legendary 1967 ‘Ice Bowl’ NFL Championship game parimatch betting between the Cowboys and Packers. The temperature on the field was a brutal -48°F thanks to the wind chill and a malfunctioning turf-heating system. The frigid temperatures did not stop the Cowboys and Packers from putting on what is still considered one of the greatest games in NFL history.

COVID “no-fan” games gave researchers a rare look at what happens when the crowd disappears, and many found the edge dipped. Historically, home teams win approximately 54% of their games, indicating a considerable advantage. However, the significance can vary depending on the specific circumstances of each game.

Referee decisions also favor home teams significantly, though VAR technology has somewhat reduced this bias. A comprehensive study of 4,356 matches across 12 European leagues uncovered that referees penalized more fouls by home teams (+0.78) when matches were played without spectators, yet away teams’ foul rates remained relatively unchanged (-0.05) 11. Similarly, home teams received more yellow cards (+0.11) in empty stadiums, contrasting with away teams who saw fewer cautions (-0.34) 11.