IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jospec/v27y2026i1p27-56.html

The 12th Man Plays Defense: The Effects of Heterogeneous COVID-19 NFL Stadium Attendance Restrictions

Author

Listed:
  • Adam Cook

Abstract

Using heterogeneous COVID-19 stadium attendance restrictions during the 2020 NFL season as an instrumental variable for stadium attendance and a novel panel data containing historical NFL game outcomes, attendance, weather, penalty assessment and visitor travel information between 2009 and 2022, I examine the effect of home stadium attendance on a variety of match outcomes, while controlling for a comprehensive set of covariates. I find that home stadium fans influence the outcomes of NFL games in favor of the home team, and that this result is insensitive to the inclusion of other factors previously suggested to explain home advantage in gridiron football. Neither the size of the home crowd nor the home crowd density has any measurable effect on referee home bias in the NFL, suggesting NFL home fans directly influence match outcomes by negatively affecting visiting team performance, possibly through a crowd noise distraction mechanism.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam Cook, 2026. "The 12th Man Plays Defense: The Effects of Heterogeneous COVID-19 NFL Stadium Attendance Restrictions," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 27(1), pages 27-56, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:27:y:2026:i:1:p:27-56
    DOI: 10.1177/15270025251384229
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15270025251384229
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/15270025251384229?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • C26 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Instrumental Variables (IV) Estimation
    • Z20 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:27:y:2026:i:1:p:27-56. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.