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Supporters Are Not Necessary for the Home Advantage: Evidence From Same‐Stadium Derbies and Games Without an Audience
Author(s) -
VAN DE VEN NIELS
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00865.x
Subject(s) - stadium , phenomenon , precondition , advertising , psychology , team building , social psychology , public relations , business , computer science , political science , management , economics , geometry , mathematics , physics , quantum mechanics , programming language
The home advantage is the phenomenon in sports whereby the home team wins more often than the visiting team. The current data show that home crowd support is not a necessary precondition for the home advantage. In soccer games where no audience was present, the home team still had a home advantage. Furthermore, in some same‐stadium derbies (games played between 2 teams that share a stadium; e.g., AC Milan vs. Internazionale in soccer), the home team always has more crowd support, but in these games no home advantage existed. Together, these findings suggest that crowd support is not a necessary condition for a home advantage to occur. The phenomenon might thus be much broader than assumed so far.