In
team sport
A team sport includes any sport where individuals are organized into opposing sports team, teams which compete to win or cooperate to entertain their audience. Team members act together towards a shared objective. This can be done in a numb ...
s, the term home advantage – also called home ground, home field, home-field advantage, home court, home-court advantage, defender's advantage or home-ice advantage – describes the benefit that the
home team
In sports, home is the place and venue identified with a team sport. Most professional teams are named for, and marketed to, particular metropolitan areas; amateur teams may be drawn from a particular region, or from institutions such as sch ...
is said to gain over the
visiting team. This benefit has been attributed to psychological effects supporting fans have on the competitors or referees; to psychological or physiological advantages of playing near home in familiar situations; to the disadvantages away teams suffer from changing time zones or climates, or from the rigors of travel; and in some sports, to specific rules that favor the home team directly or indirectly. In
baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...
and
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...
in particular, the difference may also be the result of the home team having been assembled to take advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the home
ballpark
A ballpark, or baseball park, is a type of sports venue where baseball is played. The playing field is divided into the infield, an area whose dimensions are rigidly defined, and the outfield, where dimensions can vary widely from place to pla ...
/
ground, such as the distances to the outfield
walls
Walls may refer to:
*The plural of wall, a structure
* Walls (surname), a list of notable people with the surname
Places
* Walls, Louisiana, United States
*Walls, Mississippi, United States
* Walls, Ontario, neighborhood in Perry, Ontario, C ...
/
boundaries; most other sports are played in standardized venues.
The term is also widely used in "best-of"
playoff format
There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the ''single elimination'', the ''best-of-'' series, the ''total points series'' more commonly kn ...
s (e.g., best-of-seven) as being given to the team that is scheduled to play one more game at home than their opponent if all necessary games are played.
In many sports, such designations may also apply to games played at a neutral site, as the rules of various sports make different provisions for home and visiting teams. In
baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...
, for instance, the visiting team always bats first in each inning. Therefore, one team must be chosen to be the "visitor" when games are played at neither team's home field. Likewise, there are uncommon instances in which a team playing a game at their home venue is officially the visiting team, and their opponent officially the home team, such as when a game originally scheduled to play at one venue must be postponed and is later resumed at the other team's venue.
Advantages
In most team sports, the home or hosting team is considered to have a significant advantage over the away or visiting team. Due to this, many important games (such as playoff or elimination matches) in many sports have special rules for determining what match is played where. In
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
,
matches with two legs, one game played in each team's "home", are common. It is also common to hold important games, such as the
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...
, at a neutral site in which the location is determined years in advance. In many team sports in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
(including
baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...
,
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
, and
ice hockey
Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...
), playoff series are often held with a nearly equal number of games at each team's site. However, as it is usually beneficial to have an odd number of matches in a series (to prevent ties), the final home game is often awarded to the team that had the most success over the regular season.
An example is
UEFA Champions League
The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...
and
UEFA Europa League
The UEFA Europa League (abbreviated as UEL, or sometimes, UEFA EL), formerly the UEFA Cup, is an annual football club competition organised since 1971 by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for eligible European football clubs. It ...
home and away legs, with weaker teams often beating the favourites when playing at home. The
World Cup
A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...
victories of
Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...
(1930),
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
(1934),
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
(1966),
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
(1974),
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
(1978) and
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
(1998) are all in part attributed to the fact that the World Cup was held in the winner's country. A 2006 study by ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' found that in the
English Premiership
The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Foo ...
, a home team can be expected to score 37.29% more goals than the away team, though this changes depending on the quality of the teams involved. Others have suggested that the increase in British medals during the 2012 Olympics may have been impacted by home court advantage. (However, having home court did not help Canada at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the only Summer Games at which the hosting country failed to win a single gold medal.)
The strength of the home advantage varies for different sports, regions, seasons, and divisions. For all sports, it seems to be strongest in the early period after the creation of a new league. The effect seems to have become somewhat weaker in some sports in recent decades.
Adams & Kupper (1994)
Adams may refer to:
* For persons, see Adams (surname)
Places United States
*Adams, California
*Adams, California, former name of Corte Madera, California
* Adams, Decatur County, Indiana
* Adams, Kentucky
*Adams, Massachusetts, a New England to ...
described home-field advantage as an expertise deficiency. They demonstrated that, in theory and in practice, home-field advantage decreases as superiority of performance increases. They also showed that home-field advantage is not applicable for no-hit major league baseball games for pitchers who either replicated performance by winning two or more no-hitters or amassed a large number of career wins. Their general finding was that home-field advantage is a metric for the inability to maintain performance independent of environment and that this metric is inversely related to variables of expertise.
In recognition of the difficulty in winning away matches, cup competitions in
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
often invoke the
away goals rule
The away goals rule is a method of tiebreaker, tiebreaking in association football and other sports when teams play each other twice, once at each team's home ground. Under the away goals rule, if the total goals scored by each team are equal, the ...
. Away goals can also sometimes be used to separate teams level on points and goal difference in league competitions.
Causes
Factors related to the location and the venue
There are many causes that attribute to home advantage, such as crowd involvement, travel considerations, and environmental factors. The most commonly cited factors of home advantage are usually factors which are difficult to measure and so even their existence is debated. Most of these are psychological in nature: the home teams are familiar with the playing venue; they can lodge in their homes, rather than in a hotel, and so have less far to travel before the game; and they have the psychological support of the home fans.
Other factors, however, are easier to detect and can have noticeable effects on the outcome of the game. In
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
, for instance, the crowd often makes as much noise as it can when the visiting team is about to run a play. That can make it very difficult for the visiting team's
quarterback
The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...
to call
audible
Audible may refer to:
* Audible (service), an online audiobook store
* Audible (American football), a tactic used by quarterbacks
* ''Audible'' (film), a short documentary film featuring a deaf high school football player
* Audible finish or rush ...
play changes, or for any player to hear the
snap count
A snap (colloquially called a "hike", "snapback", or "pass from center") is the backward passing of the ball in gridiron football at the start of play from scrimmage.
Action
The ball begins on the ground with its long axis parallel to the sidel ...
. In contrast, the crowd is often quiet while the home team is on offense, and that enables the quarterback to use the hard count intended to draw the defense
offsides as the defense can hear the hard count. In
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
, when a visiting player is making a
free throw
In basketball, free throws or foul shots are unopposed attempts to score points by shooting from behind the free-throw line (informally known as the foul line or the charity stripe), a line situated at the end of the Key (basketball), restricted ...
, home fans behind the
backboard typically wave their arms or other objects in an attempt to break the visiting player's focus on making the shot. Environmental factors such as weather and altitude are easy to measure, yet their effects are debatable, as both teams have to play in the same conditions; but the home team may be more acclimated to local conditions with difficult environments, such as extremely warm or cold weather, or high altitude (such as the case of
Denver teams, as well as the
Mexico national football team
The Mexico national football team () represents Mexico in international football and is governed by the Mexican Football Federation (). It competes as a member of CONCACAF.
Mexico has qualified to seventeen World Cups and has qualified conse ...
, many of whose home matches are played in
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
).
The stadium or arena will typically be filled with home
supporters
In heraldry, supporters, sometimes referred to as ''attendants'', are figures or objects usually placed on either side of the Escutcheon (heraldry), shield and depicted holding it up.
Early forms of supporters are found in medieval seals. H ...
, who are sometimes described as being as valuable as an extra player for the home team. The home fans can sometimes create a psychological lift by cheering loudly for their team when good things happen in the game. The home crowd can also intimidate visiting players by
booing
Booing is an act of publicly showing displeasure for someone or something, such as an entertainer or an athlete, by loudly yelling "Boo!" and sustaining the "oo" sound by holding it out. People may also make hand signs such as the thumbs down sig ...
,
whistling
Whistling without the use of an artificial whistle is achieved by creating a small opening with one's lips, usually after applying moisture (licking one's lips or placing water upon them) and then blowing or sucking air through the space. The a ...
, or
heckling. Generally the home fans vastly outnumber the visiting team's supporters. While some visiting fans may travel to attend the game, home team fans will generally have better access to tickets and easier transport to the event, thus in most cases they outnumber the visitors' fans (although in
local derbies and
crosstown rivalries this may not always be the case). In some sports, such as
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
, sections of the stadium will be reserved for supporters of one team or the other (to prevent fan violence) but the home team's fans will have the bulk of the seating available to them. In addition, stadium/arena
light shows,
sound effects
A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditi ...
,
fireworks
Fireworks are a class of Explosive, low explosive Pyrotechnics, pyrotechnic devices used for aesthetic and entertainment purposes. They are most commonly used in fireworks displays (also called a fireworks show or pyrotechnics), combining a l ...
,
cheerleaders
Cheerleading is an activity in which the participants (called cheerleaders) cheer for their team as a form of encouragement. It can range from chanting slogans to intense physical activity. It can be performed to motivate sports teams, to ente ...
, and other means to enliven the crowd will be in support of the home team.
Stadium announcers in many sports will emphasize the home team's goals and lineup to excite the crowd.
Ryan Boyko, a research assistant in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, studied 5,000
English Premier League
The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Fo ...
games from 1992 to 2006, to discern any officiating bias and the influence of home crowds. The data was published in the ''Journal of Sports Sciences'' and suggested that for every additional 10,000 people attending, home team advantage increased by 0.1 goals. Additionally, his study found that home teams are likely to be awarded more
penalty kicks, and this is more likely with inexperienced
referees
A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other titl ...
.
Further, home players can be accustomed to peculiar environmental conditions of their home area. The city of
Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
, being above sea level, has thinner air, enough so that it affects the stamina of athletes whose bodies are not used to it. Although
baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...
is less
aerobically demanding than many other sports, high altitude affects that sport's game play in several important ways. Denver's combination of altitude and a
semi-arid climate
A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi-ar ...
(the city averages only about 16 in/400 mm precipitation annually) allows
fly balls to travel about 10% farther than at sea level, and also slightly reduces the ability of a
pitcher
In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw ...
to throw an effective
breaking ball
In baseball, a breaking ball is a pitch that does not travel straight as it approaches the batter; it will have sideways or downward motion on it, sometimes both (see slider). A breaking ball is not a specific pitch by that name, but is any p ...
. The low humidity also causes baseballs to dry out, making it harder for pitchers to grip them and further reducing their ability to throw breaking balls. Consequently, the
Colorado Rockies
The Colorado Rockies are an American professional baseball team based in Denver. The Rockies compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. The team plays its home baseball games at Coors Fie ...
have a very large home advantage, with a 30% better home than away record. This anomaly has been countered with Colorado's innovative use of
humidor
A humidor is a humidity-controlled box or room used primarily for storing cigars, cigarettes, cannabis, or pipe tobacco. Either too much or too little humidity can be harmful to tobacco products; a humidor's primary function is to maintain a ste ...
s to keep the baseballs from drying out
Denver's altitude advantage has also come into play in
; the second longest
field goal
A field goal (FG) is a means of scoring in gridiron football. To score a field goal, the team in possession of the ball must place kick, or drop kick, the ball through the goal, i.e., between the uprights and over the crossbar. The entire ba ...
in
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...
history took place in Denver, as did the longest recorded
punt. The national
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
team of
Bolivia
, image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg
, flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center
, flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...
also enjoys the advantage of playing at high altitude: at home during
World Cup
A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...
qualifiers at the even more extreme 3,600 m (11,800 ft) altitude of
La Paz
La Paz (), officially known as Nuestra Señora de La Paz (Spanish pronunciation: ), is the seat of government of the Bolivia, Plurinational State of Bolivia. With an estimated 816,044 residents as of 2020, La Paz is the List of Bolivian cities ...
they have even been known to beat
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
, a team regularly ranked number one in the
FIFA World Rankings
The FIFA Men's World Ranking is a ranking system for men's national teams in association football, led by Brazil . The teams of the men's member nations of FIFA, football's world governing body, are ranked based on their game results with the ...
. More recently, Bolivia beat
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
, who were ranked sixth in the world, 6–1 on April 1, 2009, Argentina's heaviest defeat since 1958. In
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...
, the condition of the
pitch and the behaviour of the ball when it bounces off the pitch varies significantly in different parts of the world, and consequently the players on the visiting team must adjust to the ball behaving in an unfamiliar way to be successful on foreign surfaces; additionally, the home team has the right to adjust the preparation of its pitches in a manner which specifically enhances its own strengths or exacerbates its opponent's weaknesses.
The weather can also play a major factor. For example, the February average temperature minimum in
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
,
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
is , while the average at the same time in
Kazan
Kazan ( ; rus, Казань, p=kɐˈzanʲ; tt-Cyrl, Казан, ''Qazan'', IPA: ɑzan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Volga and the Kazanka rivers, covering a ...
,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
is , with snow being common. This means that when
Rubin Kazan
FC Rubin Kazan (russian: Футбо́льный клуб Руби́н Каза́нь, ''Futbolny klub Rubin Kazan'' , Tatar: Рубин Казан) is a Russian professional football club based in the city of Kazan. They play in the second-tier ...
played at home to
Hapoel Tel Aviv in the
2009-10 UEFA Europa League, Hapoel needed to acclimatize and were therefore at a disadvantage. Hapoel duly lost the match 3-0. This advantage, however, can also be a disadvantage to the home team, as weather conditions can impede the home team as much as the visitors: the
Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. ...
, whose home stadium (
Highmark Stadium) is subject to high and unpredictable winds and
lake-effect snow
Lake-effect snow is produced during cooler atmospheric conditions when a cold air mass moves across long expanses of warmer lake water. The lower layer of air, heated up by the lake water, picks up water vapor from the lake and rises up through ...
in the late fall and early winter, regularly suffer large numbers of injuries late in the season.
Sometimes the unique attributes of a stadium create a home-field advantage. The unique off-white
Teflon
Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene that has numerous applications. It is one of the best-known and widely applied PFAS. The commonly known brand name of PTFE-based composition is Teflon by Chemou ...
-coated roof of the
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome
The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (commonly called the Metrodome) was a domed sports stadium located in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. It opened in 1982 as a replacement for Metropolitan Stadium, the former home of the National Football League ...
trapped and reflected noise to such an extent that it was distracting or even harmful. This, combined with the color of the roof, caused opposing baseball players to commit more errors in the Dome than in other ballparks. While this is no longer an issue for opponents of the
Minnesota Twins
The Minnesota Twins are an American professional baseball team based in Minneapolis. The Twins compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central Division. The team is named after the Twin Cities area w ...
with that team's 2010 move to the open-air
Target Field
Target Field is a baseball stadium in the historic warehouse district of downtown Minneapolis. Since its opening in 2010, the stadium has been the home ballpark of Major League Baseball's Minnesota Twins. The stadium hosted the 2014 Major Leag ...
, it remained important to the many college baseball teams that played games in the Dome until its late 2013 closing.
Hard Rock Stadium
Hard Rock Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium located in Miami Gardens, Florida. The stadium is the home field for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League (NFL) and the Miami Hurricanes, the University of Miami's NCAA Division I college ...
, the home stadium of the NFL's
Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football team based in the Miami metropolitan area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member team of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The team pla ...
, is designed in such a way that when the sun is overhead, the home sideline is in the shade while the visitors sideline is directly in the suns path. This, combined with the hot tropical climate
South Florida
South Florida is the southernmost region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is one of Florida's three most commonly referred to directional regions; the other two are Central Florida and North Florida. South Florida is the southernmost part of th ...
receives, can lead to differences of up to 30 degrees Fahrenheit or more between the two sidelines, with the visiting sideline temperature getting as high as 120°F (49°C). The
parquet floor at the
Boston Celtics
The Boston Celtics ( ) are an American professional basketball team based in Boston. The Celtics compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Atlantic Division. Founded in 1946 as one of t ...
' former home of
Boston Garden
The Boston Garden was an arena in Boston, Massachusetts. Designed by boxing promoter Tex Rickard, who also built the third iteration of New York's Madison Square Garden, it opened on November 17, 1928, as "Boston Madison Square Garden" (late ...
contained many defects, which were said to give the Celtics, who were more likely to be familiar with the playing surface, an advantage. During the
1985–1986 season, the
Larry Bird
Larry Joe Bird (born December 7, 1956) is an American former professional basketball player, coach, and executive in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed "the Hick from French Lick" and "Larry Legend", Bird is widely regarded a ...
-led Celtics posted a home court record of 40–1; this record still stands in the
NBA
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...
.
Memorial Gymnasium, the venue for
men's and
women's
A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...
basketball at
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...
, was built in 1952 with the team benches at the ends of the court instead of along one of the sidelines, a setup that was not unusual at the time. However, the configuration is now unique in U.S. major-college sports, and has been said to give the Commodores an edge because opposing coaches are not used to directing their teams from the baseline.
Cherry Hill Arena, a
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
-based arena in the southern suburbs of
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
, had a number of idiosyncrasies that its home teams used to their advantage but earned the arena an extremely poor reputation, including a slanted ice surface that forced opponents to skate the majority of the game uphill and lack of showers for the visiting team.
''
Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...
'', in a 17 January 2011 article, reported that home crowds, rigor of travel for visiting teams, scheduling, and unique home field characteristics, ''were not'' factors in giving home teams an advantage. The journal concluded that it was favorable treatment by game officials and referees that conferred advantages on home teams. They stated that sports officials are unwittingly and psychologically influenced by home crowds and the influence is significant enough to affect the outcomes of sporting events in favor of the home team.
Other research has found that crowd support, travel fatigue, geographical distance, pitch familiarity, and referee bias do not have a strong effect when each factor is considered alone suggesting that it is the combination of several different factors that creates the overall home advantage effect. An
evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolv ...
explanation for the home advantage effect refers to observed behavioral and physiological responses in animals when they are defending their
home territory against intruders. This causes a rise in aggression and
testosterone
Testosterone is the primary sex hormone and anabolic steroid in males. In humans, testosterone plays a key role in the development of Male reproductive system, male reproductive tissues such as testes and prostate, as well as promoting secondar ...
levels in the defenders. A similar effect has been observed in football with testosterone levels being significantly higher in home games than in away games. Goalkeepers, the last line of defense, have particularly strong testosterone changes when playing against a bitter rival as compared to a training season. How testosterone may influence results is unclear but may include cognitive effects such as motivation and physiological effects such as reaction time.
An extreme example of home advantage was the
2013 Nigeria Premier League; each of the 20 teams lost at most 3 of 19 home matches and won at most 3 of 19 away matches.
Paul Doyle ascribed this to visiting teams' facing "violent crowds, questionable refereeing and
.. riving just before kick-off after long road trips, often on hazardous surfaces".
The 2020–21 NHL season saw major disruption due to COVID-19-restricted conditions that resulted in bubble playoffs and ghost games, as fans were unable to attend in person. New research has shown that this led to a significant drop to home advantage compared with the previous six seasons. In 592 games played under the restricted conditions through March, home teams suffered a decline of 10% while road teams’ win rates increased by 7%.
Factors related to the game rules
In a number of sports, the hosting team has the advantage of playing with their first choice uniforms, while the visiting team wears their alternative
away/road colors. Some sports leagues simply state that the team wears its away uniforms only when its primary jerseys would clash with the colors of the home team, while other leagues mandate that visiting teams must always wear their away colors regardless. However, sometimes teams wear their alternative uniforms by choice. This is especially true in North American sports where generally one uniform is white or grey, and "Color vs. color" games (e.g., blue vs. red uniforms) are a rarity, having been discouraged in the era of
black-and-white
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey.
Media
The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...
television.
["NFL Color vs. Color – Part I"](_blank)
"Part II: Back to the Future"
"Part III: A Modest Proposal"
, Phil Hecken, 2010 (Retrieved 3 March 2013) Many teams from warm-weather cities may wear their white uniforms at home, forcing their opponent to wear dark uniforms in the hot weather. An exception is a rule in
high school American football (except Texas, which plays by
NCAA football
College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States.
Unlike most o ...
rules), requiring the home team to wear dark jerseys and the visiting team to wear white jerseys, which may work as a disadvantage to the home team in hot-weather games.
In
ice hockey
Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...
, there are at least three distinct rule-related advantages for the home team. The first is referred to as "last change", where during stoppages of play, the home team is allowed to make player substitutions after the visiting team does (unless the home team ices the puck, in which case no substitutions are allowed). This allows the home team to obtain favorable player matchups. This rule makes the home team designation important even in games played on neutral ice. Traditionally, the second advantage was that when lining up for the
face-off
A face-off is the method used to begin and restart play after goals in some sports using sticks, primarily ice hockey, bandy, floorball, broomball, rinkball, and lacrosse.
During a face-off, two teams line up in opposition to each other, and t ...
, the away team's centre always had to place his stick on the ice before the centre of the home team. However, in both the NHL and international rule sets, this now applies only for face-offs at the centre-ice spot; when a face-off takes place anywhere else on the ice, the defending centre has to place his stick first. The centre who is allowed to place his stick last gains the ability to time the face-off better and gives him greater odds of winning it. The third advantage is that the home team has the benefit of choosing whether to take the first or second attempt in a shootout.
In baseball, the home team – which bats in the bottom half of each inning – enjoys the advantage of being able to end the game immediately if it has the lead in the ninth inning (or other scheduled final inning) or in
extra innings
Extra innings is the extension of a baseball or softball game in order to break a tie.
Ordinarily, a baseball game consists of nine regulation innings (in softball and high school baseball games there are typically seven innings; in Little Lea ...
. If the home team is leading at the end of the top half of the ninth inning, the game ends without the bottom half being played. If the home team is trailing or the score is tied in the bottom half of the ninth inning or any extra inning, the game ends immediately if the home team takes the lead; the visiting team does not get another opportunity to score and the home team does not have to protect their lead. On the other hand, if the visiting team has the lead when the top half of the ninth inning or extra inning ends, the home team still gets an opportunity to score and so the visiting team must protect their lead. In addition, in the late innings, the home team knows how many runs they need to win or tie, and can therefore strategize accordingly. For example, in a tie game in the ninth inning or extra innings, the home team may employ strategies such as
bunting or
stealing bases
In baseball, a stolen base occurs when a runner advances to a base to which they are not entitled and the official scorer rules that the advance should be credited to the action of the runner. The umpires determine whether the runner is safe or ...
, which oftentimes increase the chance of scoring one run, but decrease the chance of scoring multiple runs.
Additionally in baseball, the host team is familiar with the unique dimensions of their home field yielding them advantages (pitching, hitting, fielding) over visiting teams. Before the
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
labor agreement that ended the
2021–22 lockout saw the
designated hitter
The designated hitter (DH) is a baseball player who bats in place of another position player, most commonly the pitcher. The position is authorized by Major League Baseball Rule 5.11. It was adopted by the American League in 1973 and later by th ...
added permanently in the National League, the home league's rules concerning the
designated hitter
The designated hitter (DH) is a baseball player who bats in place of another position player, most commonly the pitcher. The position is authorized by Major League Baseball Rule 5.11. It was adopted by the American League in 1973 and later by th ...
(DH) were followed during
interleague
Interleague play in Major League Baseball refers to regular-season baseball games played between an American League (AL) team and a National League (NL) team. Interleague play was first introduced during the 1997 Major League Baseball season. Pri ...
games, including the
World Series
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the World ...
. This put AL teams at a disadvantage when they played in NL parks, as AL pitchers were typically not used to batting nor baserunning. NL teams at AL parks were at a disadvantage because a player who did not play often had to bat an entire game, usually on consecutive nights. The NL team's DH was a
pinch-hitter
In baseball, a pinch hitter is a substitute batter. Batters can be substituted at any time while the ball is dead (not in active play); the manager may use any player who has not yet entered the game as a substitute. Unlike basketball, America ...
who batted perhaps once every two or three games during the season, or alternated in a platoon system with other players (such as a catcher who does not start because the starting pitcher uses the other catcher), while the AL team's DH batted three or more times a game throughout the season.
Measuring and comparing of home-field advantage
![Comparison of Home Advantage in European Football Leagues](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Comparison_of_Home_Advantage_in_European_Football_Leagues.gif)
Measuring the home-field advantage of a team (in a league with balanced schedule) requires a determination of the number of opponents for which the result at home-field was better (
), same (
), and worse (
). Goals scored and conceded – in so called ''combined measure of home team advantage'' – are used to determine which results are better, same, and which are worse. Given two results between teams
and
,
played at
's field and
played at
's field, we can compute differences in scores (e.g. from
's point of view):
and
. Team
played better at home field if
, and
played better at away field if