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Television match officials, referees, and home advantage: Evidence from the European Rugby Cup

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  • Peter Dawson
  • Patrick Massey
  • Paul Downward

Abstract

•65% of European Rugby Cup group stages matches resulted in home wins.•64% of yellow cards awarded to away team in ERC.•Crowd effects and referee experience key to home advantage in rugby.•Television match official (TMO) has increased home advantage.•Technology need not necessarily improve balance in decision making.The regulation of on-field competition by officials is an important aspect of the management of sport. Increasingly, sports are providing technological support for officials to aid their decision making. In this paper, the authors analyse the impact of such an innovation by exploring the impact of the introduction and subsequent extended role of the television match official on the award of sanctionable offences of players in matches played in the group stages of the European Rugby Cup (ERC) and European Rugby Champions Cup (ERCC) over 15 seasons from 2000/01 to 2015/16. Rugby Union is an important sport to reflect upon because of the central role that the referee plays in rule interpretation and game management and the level of home advantage tends to be relatively high in the sport. Indeed, 65% of all matches in the sample analysed resulted in home wins. Results suggest that crowd effects and referee experience influence referee decisions, but the effects vary depending on the type of incident being considered. The main finding and contribution of the paper is that the introduction of the television match official has influenced the incidence of sanctions issued to both teams. However, the increase in the number of yellow cards awarded to away teams implies that home bias has increased since the introduction of the television match official. This suggests that referees may have been consciously or unconsciously seeking to avoid contributing to home bias before the introduction of a further official who is remote from the effects of the crowd. Recognising that such an adjustment takes place according to the circumstances is important information for the training of officials; particularly as a television match official may not be present in all games that they will referee.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Dawson & Patrick Massey & Paul Downward, 2020. "Television match officials, referees, and home advantage: Evidence from the European Rugby Cup," Sport Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 443-454, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rsmrxx:v:23:y:2020:i:3:p:443-454
    DOI: 10.1016/j.smr.2019.04.002
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    1. Federico Fioravanti & Fernando Delbianco & Fernando Tohmé, 2025. "Visitors Out! The Absence of Away Team Supporters as a Source of Home Advantage in Football," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 106(4), July.
    2. Alma Cohen & Zvika Neeman & Florian Auferoth, 2024. "Judging under Public Pressure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 106(1), pages 151-166, January.
    3. John Considine & John Eakins & Peter Horgan & Conor Weir, 2024. "Compensating Tendencies in Disciplinary Sanctions: The Case of Hurling," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 25(6), pages 659-682, August.
    4. Zilong Li & Xidong Guo & Zuzanna Studnicka & Jiming Zhu, 2024. "Diminished Home Advantage in Chinese Basketball during COVID-19: The Role of Team Strength and Local Temperature," Working Papers 202408, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    5. Alexandru Nicolae Ungureanu & Corrado Lupo & Paolo Riccardo Brustio, 2021. "A Machine Learning Approach to Analyze Home Advantage during COVID-19 Pandemic Period with Regards to Margin of Victory and to Different Tournaments in Professional Rugby Union Competitions," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(23), pages 1-8, December.

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