IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/umiodp/319069.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Home bias in different German football leagues

Author

Listed:
  • Böttger, Tom
  • Vischer, Lars

Abstract

This study investigates the presence and variation of home bias across different hierarchical levels in German men's football. Based on an extensive dataset comprising 357,530 matches from the 2023/2024 season-collected via a Python script-the analysis includes match outcomes, attendance figures, club locations, and prior season standings across 165 divisions in 28 football associations. These leagues span 13 hierarchical levels, from professional to amateur football. The results show that home bias is significantly more pronounced in lower divisions. This effect manifests itself through a higher frequency of home wins, fewer draws, and greater sensitivity to travel distance in amateur divisions. In contrast, more professional leagues may benefit from standardised conditions, which mitigate home bias. Overall, the findings highlight the strong influence of professionalisation on competitive balance. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of how contextual factors shape match outcomes and demonstrates the need for differentiated analysis across league levels when examining behavioural biases in sports.

Suggested Citation

  • Böttger, Tom & Vischer, Lars, 2025. "Home bias in different German football leagues," Discussion Papers of the Institute for Organisational Economics 5/2025, University of Münster, Institute for Organisational Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:umiodp:319069
    DOI: 10.17879/73948674436
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/319069/1/1927574994.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17879/73948674436?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

    Amateur Sports; Competitive Balance; Football; Home Bias; Travel Distance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • Z20 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - General
    • Z21 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics - - - Industry Studies

    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:zbw:umiodp:319069. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ilmuede.html .

    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.