Any of you stats fiends keeping tabs on the influence of empty stadia on
home advantage ?

Seems to me home advantage could in theory consist of all of these in different measure (there may be others):

1. Travel time and fatigue

2. Being close to the stadium, sleeping in own bed or in familiar circumstances etc.

3. Size and consistency of pitch that you are familiar with

4. Adrenal boost from supportive fans

5. Referee decisions going your way because of influence of fans (even
in the VAR era, this is probably still present, and a number of studies
do support this as an important component of home advantage

6. Other physical things like altitude, smog, temperature and so on
that normally don't play too much of a role in domestic leagues
(especially in relatively small European countries) (though in the NHL, altitude in Denver and Calgary apparently does do something)


Advantages 4 and 5 should disappear entirely with no fans. IS this
happening ?

1 and 2 should be less influential in domestic leagues, especially those
with lots of teams located close together, than in the CL or Europa league.

If anyone is keeping tabs, or knows of a site that is, I am curious
about this (but too lazy and busy to do it myself)
--- SBBSecho 3.06-Win32
* Origin: SportNet Gateway Site (24:150/2)

On Thursday, September 24, 2020 at 11:23:09 AM UTC-4, MH wrote:

Any of you stats fiends keeping tabs on the influence of empty stadia on home advantage ?

Yes, there have probably been already half a dozen studies on this. The Bundesliga, who resumed play first, saw a big drop in teams' Home Field Advantage (HFA) so everybody rushed to say how important it was, but in other leagues the change has not been so dramatic.
Here is a nice summary from The Economist (with data up to end of July), but paywalled:
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/25/empty-stadiums-have-shrunk-football-teams-home-advantage
The bottom line is that the share of cards going to the away team dropped uniformly across all leagues, in support of the "crowds affect the referee" theory. On average, the share of points going to the home team dropped a bit, but with quite a lot of variation across leagues (in fact, 7 of the 16 leagues saw an increase in the share of points going to the home team). The share of shots made by the home team also seems to have dropped a bit, but that could be consistent both with "crowds inject adrenaline into the home team" and "crowds affect referees --> lower number of cards to away teams means away teams can defend more aggressively and prevent shots"
Also, the share of points won by the home team is still well above 50%, even after lockdown. FiveThirtyEight's model has (arbitrarily) decided to cut in half the HFA parameter, for what it's worth.
--- SBBSecho 3.06-Win32
* Origin: SportNet Gateway Site (24:150/2)

Thanks

Also, the share of points won by the home team is still well above 50%, even after lockdown.

How well does that map to distance travelled, do you know ?
I mean, Chelsea playing at an empty Emirates, Craven Cottage, City of
London, Selhurst etc with no fans are surely not going to be
disadvantaged as much as they would be having to travel to St. James's
park or some so-so club on the continent's ground.

Just wondering if it gets close to 50 % in matches among clubs less than
1 hr's drive from each other. Or maybe the sample size is too small in
most countries other than Scotland and England.


FiveThirtyEight's model has (arbitrarily) decided to cut in half the
HFA parameter, for what it's worth.

--- SBBSecho 3.06-Win32
* Origin: SportNet Gateway Site (24:150/2)

On Thursday, 24 September 2020 17:23:09 UTC+2, MH wrote:

Any of you stats fiends keeping tabs on the influence of empty stadia on home advantage ?

Short overview:

https://football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2020/wp304/en/


Ciao,
Werner
--- SBBSecho 3.06-Win32
* Origin: SportNet Gateway Site (24:150/2)