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Does the Home Advantage Depend on Crowd Support? Evidence From Same-Stadium Derbies

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  • Michela Ponzo
  • Vincenzo Scoppa

Abstract

We investigate to what extent crowd support contributes to the home advantage in soccer, disentangling this effect from other mechanisms such as players’ familiarity with the stadium and travel fatigue. To evaluate the relevance of crowd support in determining home advantage, we analyze same-stadium derbies (matches among teams that share the same stadium), in which teams enjoy different levels of support from the crowd—the home team has many more supporters mainly because of season ticket holders—while teams do not differ in terms of travel fatigue or familiarity with the stadium. Our estimation results suggest the existence of a sizable crowd support’s effect on the home advantage generated through the encouragement of players’ performance. Furthermore, we find consistent evidence that the support of the crowd tends to bias referee’s decisions (in terms of penalties, red cards, and yellow cards) in favor of the home team.

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  • Michela Ponzo & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2018. "Does the Home Advantage Depend on Crowd Support? Evidence From Same-Stadium Derbies," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 19(4), pages 562-582, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:19:y:2018:i:4:p:562-582
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Seungwhan Chun & Sang Soo Park, 2019. "Home Advantage in Skeleton: Familiarity versus Crowd Support," Discussion Paper Series 1901, Institute of Economic Research, Korea University.
    2. Scoppa, Vincenzo, 2021. "Social pressure in the stadiums: Do agents change behavior without crowd support?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    3. J. James Reade & Dominik Schreyer & Carl Singleton, 2020. "Echoes: what happens when football is played behind closed doors?," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2020-14, Department of Economics, Reading University.
    4. van Damme, Nils & Baert, Stijn, 2019. "Home advantage in European international soccer: Which dimension of distance matters?," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), vol. 13, pages 1-17.
    5. van Ours, Jan C., 2017. "Artificial Pitches and Unfair Home Advantage in Professional Football," CEPR Discussion Papers 12341, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Massimiliano Ferraresi & Gianluca Gucciardi, 2020. "Team performance and audience: experimental evidence from the football sector," Working papers 94, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    7. Dominik Schreyer & Sascha L. Schmidt & Benno Torgler, 2020. "Using reminders with different reward opportunities to reduce no-show behavior: Empirical evidence from a large-scale field experiment in professional sport," CREMA Working Paper Series 2020-19, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    8. J. James Reade & Dominik Schreyer & Carl Singleton, 2020. "Eliminating supportive crowds reduces referee bias," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2020-25, Department of Economics, Reading University.
    9. Thomas Peeters & Jan C. van Ours, 2020. "Seasonal Home Advantage in English Professional Football; 1973-2018," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 20-025/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    10. Faltings, Richard & Krumer, Alex & Lechner, Michael, 2019. "Rot-Jaune-Verde. Language and Favoritism: Evidence from Swiss Soccer," Economics Working Paper Series 1915, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    11. Jan C. Ours, 2019. "A Note on Artificial Pitches and Home Advantage in Dutch Professional Football," De Economist, Springer, vol. 167(1), pages 89-103, March.
    12. Jan C. van Ours, 2017. "Artificial Pitches and Unfair Home Advantage in Professional Football," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 17-093/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    13. Seungwhan Chun & Sang Soo Park, 2021. "Home Advantage in Skeleton: Familiarity versus Crowd Support," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(1), pages 3-26, January.
    14. Goller, Daniel & Krumer, Alex, 2020. "Let's meet as usual: Do games played on non-frequent days differ? Evidence from top European soccer leagues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 286(2), pages 740-754.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    soccer; home advantage; crowd support; social pressure; team performance; attendance; travel fatigue; stadium familiarity; referee home bias;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D89 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Other
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

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