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Home advantage and crowd attendance: Evidence from rugby during the Covid 19 pandemic

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  • Federico Fioravanti
  • Fernando Delbianco
  • Fernando Tohm'e

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic forced almost all professional and amateur sports to be played without attending crowds. Thus, it induced a large-scale natural experiment on the impact of social pressure on decision making and behavior in sports fields. Using a data set of 1027 rugby union matches from 11 tournaments in 10 countries, we find that home teams have won less matches and their points difference decreased during the pandemics, shedding light on the impact of crowd attendance on the {\em home advantage} of sports teams.

Suggested Citation

  • Federico Fioravanti & Fernando Delbianco & Fernando Tohm'e, 2021. "Home advantage and crowd attendance: Evidence from rugby during the Covid 19 pandemic," Papers 2105.01446, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2105.01446
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Carl Singleton & J. James Reade & Johan Rewilak & Dominik Schreyer, 2021. "How big is home advantage at the Olympic Games?," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2021-13, Department of Economics, University of Reading.

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