Original research
Home advantage in Australian soccer

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2013.02.014Get rights and content

Abstract

Objectives

The aims of this study were to quantify the magnitude of home advantage (HA) in Australian soccer and to investigate how home-team crowd support and away-team travel may contribute to it.

Design

A paired design was used wherein each match contributed two observations, one for the home team and one for the away team.

Methods

The data used in this study were all matches from the first seven seasons (2005/06–2011/12) of the Australian A-League – the major soccer league in Australia. Repeated measures Poisson regression analysis was used to investigate the effect that crowd size and density, distance and direction travelled by away teams, and crossing time zones may have on HA.

Results

HA in terms of the percentage of competition points gained by home teams in the A-League averaged 58% over the study period. HA increased significantly with increasing number of time zones crossed by away teams (p < 0.001). HA also appeared to increase with increasing crowd size (p = 0.07) but only up to about 20,000 persons. Crowd density, distance travelled and direction travelled were not independently associated with HA.

Conclusions

The present results suggest that in soccer competitions where time zones are crossed, travel effects such as jet lag may play an even greater role in HA than home-team crowd support. Travel management programs aimed at reducing the effects of jet lag could significantly improve away team performance in Australian soccer.

Introduction

Home advantage (HA) is the tendency for sporting teams to perform better at their home ground than away from home, and its existence has been well established in a range of team sports including association football (soccer).1, 2 HA in soccer occurs worldwide, at almost every level of the game, and at the elite level about 60% of all competition points gained are at home.3

In one of the first major reviews of HA in sport Courneya and Carron4 identified four potential causal factors: adverse effects of travel, familiarity with local conditions, rules favouring the home team, and the effect of crowd support on both player performance and referee decision making. Since then it has been shown that territoriality – the protective response to the invasion of one's perceived territory – may also play an important role.3, 5 In soccer, travel effects and familiarity may play some role in HA, rule factors play little or no role, territoriality may be important in isolated and ethnically distinct areas, and although home-team crowd support appears to play a major role the mechanisms through which it operates are unclear.6 Whichever factors are important, it is likely that they interact with each other as well as with other psychological and tactical variables; for example, the expectancy to perform worse away from home may lead to away teams adopting a more defensive approach.6

Very little research has been devoted to HA in Australian soccer. A study comparing a worldwide sample of domestic soccer leagues found that HA in terms of the percentage of all competition points gained by home teams was 61.3% during the 1998–2003 seasons of the Australian National Soccer League (predecessor to the A-League),3 very close to the worldwide average of 61.5%.3 HA has also been investigated in other codes of football in Australia, with 59.9% of matches in the Australian Football League (Australian Rules football) being won by home teams7 and 56.6% of points in the Australian Rugby League being scored by home teams.8 In tri-nations (Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) rugby union HA is particularly high (73.3%), and in the Super 12 rugby tournament – involving tri-nation club teams – HA is 63%.9

Only a few studies have investigated the effect of crowd size on HA in soccer, and these have mainly involved comparing overall HA and average crowd size between different leagues. Such comparisons are insensitive to variation within competitions, and hence have much less power to detect actual effects than match-level analysis. A study of English soccer leagues found that HA was greater in the top four leagues (about 60%) than in the lower five leagues (about 55%) where average crowd sizes were much lower.6 However, HA varied little between the top four leagues even though their average crowd size ranged from less than 5000 to over 30,000. A study of Scottish soccer leagues showed a similar pattern of results, with the same level of HA (about 60%) observed in each of the top two divisions despite a four-fold difference in average crowd size, and almost no HA in the third division which attracted much smaller crowds.10 Only one published study has investigated the effect of crowd size on HA (in terms of match outcome) using individual match data; a regression analysis of matches in the English Premier League, controlling for potential confounders such as team ability, showed that HA increased significantly by 0.09 goals for every 10,000 person increase in crowd size.11

Even less attention has been given to the association between crowd density (ratio of crowd size to stadium capacity) and HA in soccer. In a study of the top four divisions of the English soccer league, it was observed that although average crowd density ranged from less than 20% in division 4 to about 70% in division 1, there was no corresponding difference in HA.12 The regression analysis of English Premier League matches mentioned above showed no evidence of a linear association between crowd density and HA when controlling for crowd size.12

Several studies have investigated the effect of distance travelled by away teams on HA in soccer, although most of these have used data from domestic leagues where relatively small distances are travelled. A study of English Premier League matches from 1970 to 1981 found no difference in HA when away teams travelled more than 200 miles (320 km), compared to matches where less travel was involved.12 A subsequent analysis of the same league, however, which used linear regression to determine the correlation between HA and distance travelled, showed a weak but significant positive linear association between the two.13 Although distance travel was significantly association with HA in Turkish soccer,14 no such effect was observed in the Greek Superleague.15 A study of the German Football Premier League, where larger distances (up to 800 km) are travelled than in most other European domestic soccer leagues, HA increased significantly with distance travelled by away teams, although the effect of distance travelled appeared to peak at about 500 km.16 The only published study of HA and travel in a non-European domestic league used match data from the first division of the Brazilian national soccer league, where large distances (up to 4000 km) are travelled by away teams; HA increased slightly, but significantly, by 0.1 goal per 1000 km travelled.17 In an analysis of World Cup soccer matches, although distance travelled was significantly associated HA, it explained only about 1% of the total variation in HA.18

The effects of travel on HA have also been investigated in terms of crossing time zones and direction travelled. In professional ice-hockey in North American (NHL), away team performance was negatively associated with the number of time zones crossed, although only when interacting with increased pre-match preparation time.19 In the American National Football League, teams crossing time zones from west to east appeared to experience poorer performance, although there was no evidence of such an effect for teams travelling in the opposite direction; this was attributed to differences in the way the body adjusts to shorter and longer days.20 This analysis, however, did not control for potential confounding factors such as team ability and crowd size, which may have influenced the results. Also, the authors acknowledged that the relatively small number of ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ teams makes it difficult to separate travel effects from individual team effects.

Although the evidence to date suggests that both home-team crowd support and away-team travel may contribute to HA, there appears to be no consensus as to which aspects of these are important. In an attempt to address this issue, the present study used match data from the A-League – the major soccer league in Australia – to simultaneously investigate the effects of two different aspects of crowd support (size and density), and three aspects of travel (distance, direction and crossing time zones) on HA. The large distances (over 1000 km on average) between home venues in this league make it ideal for investigating travel effects. As this is the first comprehensive study of HA in Australia soccer, a further aim will be to quantify the overall magnitude of HA in the A-League, and to describe any variation over time.

Although soccer in Australia is now officially referred to as ‘football’, the term ‘soccer’ is used in this article to avoid any confusion with the other codes of football played in Australia.

Section snippets

Methods

The data used in this study were all matches from the first seven seasons (2005/06–2011/12) of the Australian A-League. As of the 2011/12 season the A-League included nine teams representing each of the five mainland Australian states and one team from New Zealand. The league consists of a regular home and away season where each team plays each other three times, with teams playing approximately the same number of home and away matches depending on the number of teams in the competition that

Results

Table 1 shows match frequencies, median crowd size and home advantage (HA) in the A-League for the seasons 2005/06–2011/12. Over the seven seasons average HA in terms of competition points gained was 57.7%, a little higher than that based on goals scored (56.5%). HA for points gained peaked at 65.5% in 2008/09, and then declined to 57.1% in 2011/12. There did not appear to be an association between HA and median crowd size across seasons.

Median crowd size during the first seven seasons of the

Discussion

The aims of this study were to determine the magnitude of home advantage (HA) in the Australian A-League, and to investigate how various crowd and travel factors may contribute to HA in this league. In terms of competition points gained, HA averaged 57.7% over the first seven seasons of the A-League, which is low compared to the previous national soccer league (NSL) in Australia (61.3%)3 and top domestic leagues in England (61.0%),25 Spain (62.1%),26 Greece (65.9%)15 and Turkey (61.5%).25 The

Conclusions

This study provides further evidence that adverse effects of travel contribute to home advantage (HA) in soccer. In particular the results suggest that in competitions where several time zones are crossed, travel effects such as jet lag may play an even greater role in HA than home-team crowd support considered to be the most important contributor to HA in soccer.6 This study also confirms previous findings that the effect of home-team crowd support on HA appears to be determined more by the

Practical implication

  • Home teams in Australian soccer gain an advantage over away teams in terms of goals scored and competition points gained.

  • In Australian soccer, home advantage increases with the increasing number of time zones crossed by away teams.

  • In soccer competitions where several time zones are crossed, travel effects such as jet lag may play an even greater role in home advantage than home-team crowd support.

  • Travel management programs aimed at reducing the effects of jet lag could significantly improve

Acknowledgements

No external financial assistance was provided for this project.

References (30)

  • H. Oberhofer et al.

    Distance matters in away games: evidence from the German football league

    J Econ Psych

    (2010)
  • A.M. Nevill et al.

    Home advantage in sport: an overview of studies on the advantage of playing at home

    Sports Med

    (1999)
  • R. Pollard et al.

    Long-term trends in home advantage in professional team sports in North America and England (1876–2003)

    J Sports Sci

    (2005)
  • R. Pollard

    Worldwide regional variations in home advantage in association football

    J Sports Sci

    (2006)
  • K.S. Courneya et al.

    The home advantage in sport competitions: a literature review

    J Sport Exerc Psychol

    (1992)
  • R. Pollard et al.

    Home advantage in football in south-west Europe: long-term trends, regional variation, and team differences

    Eur J Sport Sci

    (2009)
  • R. Pollard

    Home advantage in soccer: variations in its magnitude and a literature review of the inter-related factors associated with its existence

    J Sport Behav

    (2006)
  • S.R. Clarke

    Home advantage in the Australian football league

    J Sports Sci

    (2005)
  • A. Lee

    Modelling rugby league data via bivariate negative binomial regression

    Aust N Z J Stat

    (1999)
  • R.H. Morton

    Home advantage in southern hemisphere rugby union: national and international

    J Sports Sci

    (2006)
  • A.M. Nevill et al.

    Factors associated with home advantage in English and Scottish soccer matches

    J Sports Sci

    (1996)
  • R.H. Boyko et al.

    Referee bias contributes to home advantage in English Premiership football

    J Sports Sci

    (2007)
  • R. Pollard

    Home advantage in soccer: a retrospective analysis

    J Sports Sci

    (1986)
  • S.R. Clarke et al.

    Home ground advantage of individual clubs in English soccer

    J R Statist Soc D

    (1995)
  • M. Pollard et al.

    Why is home advantage in South-East Europe the highest in the world?

    Book of Long Papers, 12th European Congress of Sport Psychology

    (2007)
  • Cited by (62)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text