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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.

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  • 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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    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. Michael Christian Leitner & Frank Daumann & Florian Follert & Fabio Richlan, 2023. "The cauldron has cooled down: a systematic literature review on home advantage in football during the COVID-19 pandemic from a socio-economic and psychological perspective," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 73(2), pages 605-633, June.
    3. Bühren Christoph & Gabriel Marvin, 2023. "Performing best when it matters the most: evidence from professional handball," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 19(3), pages 185-203, September.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Federico Fioravanti & Fernando Delbianco & Fernando Tohmé, 2023. "The relative importance of ability, luck and motivation in team sports: a Bayesian model of performance in the English Rugby Premiership," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 32(3), pages 715-731, September.
    7. Butler, David & Butler, Robert & Singleton, Carl, 2025. "Objective Calls Under the Spotlight: Referee Consistency and Behaviour on Football's Biggest Stage," IZA Discussion Papers 17718, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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