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Fans and Match Results: Evidence From a Natural Experiment in Brazil

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  • Carlos Alberto Belchior

Abstract

This paper assesses the effect of the crowd size on home team advantage, using a natural experiment occurred in Brazilian football. In 2015, the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) quasi-randomly assigned games to be played under an alternative schedule on Sundays at 11 a.m. This measure significantly increased attendance in assigned games. Using this alternative schedule as an instrumental variable, we show that the exogenous increase in attendance did not increase home team advantage.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Alberto Belchior, 2020. "Fans and Match Results: Evidence From a Natural Experiment in Brazil," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(7), pages 663-687, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:21:y:2020:i:7:p:663-687
    DOI: 10.1177/1527002520930812
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    Cited by:

    1. Federico Fioravanti & Fernando Delbianco & Fernando Tohm'e, 2023. "Visitors Out! The Absence of Away Team Supporters as a Source of Home Advantage in Football," Papers 2308.06279, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    2. Delbianco Fernando & Fioravanti Federico & Tohmé Fernando, 2023. "Home advantage and crowd attendance: evidence from rugby during the Covid 19 pandemic," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 19(1), pages 15-26, March.
    3. Yung-Chin Chiu & Chen-Kang Chang, 2022. "Major League Baseball during the COVID-19 pandemic: does a lack of spectators affect home advantage?," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-6, December.
    4. 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, University of Reading.
    5. Scott C Ganz & Kieran Allsop, 2024. "A Mere Fan Effect on Home-Court Advantage," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 25(1), pages 30-53, January.
    6. Emmanuel Caiazzo & Claudio Chino & Raffaele Mattera & Chiara Scarfato, 2022. "Social pressure and home bias in football: evidence from Italy," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(2), pages 1081-1091.
    7. J. James Reade & Dominik Schreyer & Carl Singleton, 2022. "Eliminating supportive crowds reduces referee bias," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(3), pages 1416-1436, July.

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