The influence of spectators on home advantage and referee bias in national teams matches: insights from UEFA Nations League

ABSTRACT

The home advantage and the subconscious referee bias regularly occur in professional sports, particularly in association football. The matches played behind closed doors in spring and summer 2020 highlighted that the crowd support is one of the main factors contributing to both phenomena in domestic leagues. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the same applies also to national teams matches, given the different impact of the other factors determining the home advantage in such matches. To this purpose, the 2018–19 and the 2020–21 editions of the UEFA Nations League – 133 matches each – were analysed, the former played in front of spectators while the latter with no or limited attendance. In particular, we examined a set of indicators of home advantage (match outcome, points, goals scored, ball possession, total shots, shots on goal, corner kicks) and of referee bias (fouls, yellow cards, red cards, penalty kicks, extra time), controlling for the FIFA World Ranking points and the number of time zones crossed. Comparing home and away teams on these parameters within each edition, we observed the occurrence of both phenomena in 2018-19, as well as their absence in 2020-21. Moreover, the comparison between the two editions revealed a significant reduction of both phenomena. The results indicate that spectators have a decisive role in contributing to both the home advantage and the referee bias in national teams matches.

KEYWORDS:

• Football
• attendance
• crowd
• support
• social pressure

Acknowledgments

We thank Elisa Gariuolo for her precious contribution to data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical statement

The study reported in the present article does not involve any human participants.

Data availability statement

The raw data are provided as supplemental material.

Notes

1 In the 22 excluded matches, the attendance ranged from a minimum of 812 people to a maximum of 17,753 people, with an average of 4,405±4,316.

2 Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, (North) Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no specific funds for the present study.