No Crowds, No Home Advantage in Football during the COVID-19 Season: Are Crowds Able to Manipulate All but the Best Referees’ Behaviour?

Abstract

This study confirmed that without crowds there was no home advantage in association football during the COVID-19 2020-21 season. Consequently, we sort to answer the obvious question, ‘Are crowds influencing referees’ behaviour?’ The number of home and away red and yellow cards awarded in the ‘no crowd’ COVID-19 2020-21 season (all 4 top English divisions) were compared with the home and away cards awarded during the previous 10 ‘crowd’ seasons (2010-11 to 2019-20). Results revealed that there was no home advantage in red and yellow cards awarded by referees in all 4 English leagues/divisions during the COVID-19 2020-21 season. Referees awarded significantly more cards to away players when adjudicating with crowds (seasons 2010-11 to 2019-20). However, in more recent ‘crowd’ seasons, Premier League referees are less susceptible to such influences with a narrowing of the gap between home and away yellow cards, suggesting that their preparation, management and training provides them with an element of ‘crowd immunity’. It would appear that home crowds are able to influence all but the very best referees’ behaviour. These new insights provide important information for the training and management of referees.

Keywords:

• Soccer
• spectators
• Premier League
• sports officials
• crowd immunity

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alan Nevill

Alan Nevill is an Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Education Health and Wellbeing, Wolverhampton University (specialization in biostatistics applied to health, sport and exercise sciences). Alan’s most recent research specializes in home advantage, multilevel and allometric modelling of large data sets, analysing human health and performance associated with body size. He is a past Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sports Sciences.

Alastair Pearson

Alastair Pearson MSc is a Professional Doctorate student in the School of Sport, Health and Exercise Science at the University of Portsmouth, UK. Alastair is part of the research team currently working in collaboration with World Netball on a multi-disciplinary project exploring development pathways and support structures available to netball match officials around the world. Alastair also works as Performance Analyst for Saints Sport at the University of St Andrews.

Tom Webb

Dr Tom Webb PhD is a Senior Lecturer and researcher in sport management at the University of Portsmouth, UK. Tom’s research focuses on sports officials from multi-disciplinary perspectives including abuse towards sports officials, mental health and wellbeing, recruitment and retention of sports officials around the world and the barriers that women sports officials can face.