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A road game or away game is a sports game where the specified team is not the host and must travel to another venue. Most professional teams represent cities or towns and amateur sports teams often represent academic institutions. Each team has a location where it practices during the season and where it hosts games. When a team is not the host, it must travel to games (usually by bus or car, hence "road", though increasingly also by plane for longer journeys). Thus, when a team is not hosting a game, the team is described as the road team, the visiting team, or the away team, and the game is described as a road game or an away game for that team. The venue in which the game is played is described as the visiting stadium or the road. The host team is said to be the
home A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or many humans, and sometimes various companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to it. ...
team. The home team is often thought to have a home advantage over the visiting team, because of their familiarity with the environment, their shorter travel times, and the influence that a parochial crowd may have over an official's decisions. A home team advantage that is unique to
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 t ...
is familiarity with 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 ...
's outfield dimensions and height of the outfield wall, as well as the size of
foul territory In baseball, a foul ball is a batted ball that: * Settles on foul territory between home and first base or between home and third base, or * Bounces and then goes past first or third base on or over foul territory, or * Has its first bounce occu ...
and location of in-play obstacles (e.g., a
bullpen In baseball, the bullpen (or simply the pen) is the area where relief pitchers warm up before entering a game. A team's roster of relief pitchers is also metonymically referred to as "the bullpen". These pitchers usually wait in the bullpen if t ...
on the playing field). Major sporting events, if not held at a neutral venue, are often over several legs at each team's home ground, so that neither team has an advantage over the other. Occasionally, the road team may not have to travel very far at all to a road game. These matches often become local derbies. A few times a year, a road team may even be lucky enough to have the road game played at their own home stadium or arena. This is prevalent in
college athletics College athletics encompasses non-professional, collegiate and university-level competitive sports and games. World University Games The first World University Games were held in 1923. There were originally called the ''Union Nationale des ...
where many schools will often play in regional leagues or
groundshare A groundshare, also known as a shared stadium or shared arena, is the principle of sharing a stadium between two local sports teams. This is usually done for the purpose of reducing the costs of either construction of two separate facilities and r ...
. The related term true road game has seen increasing use in U.S. college sports in the 21st century, especially 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 ...
. While regular-season tournaments and other special events have been part of college sports from their creation, the 21st century has seen a proliferation of such events. These are typically held at neutral sites, with some of them taking place outside the contiguous U.S. (as in the case of the Great Alaska Shootout and
Maui Invitational The Maui Invitational, currently known as the Maui Jim Maui Invitational, is an annual early-season college basketball tournament that takes place Thanksgiving week, normally in Lahaina, Hawaii, at the Lahaina Civic Center on the island of Maui. ...
) or even outside the country entirely (such as the
Battle 4 Atlantis The Battle 4 Atlantis is an early-season college basketball tournament. It takes place at Atlantis Paradise Island on Paradise Island in The Bahamas, on the week of the US holiday of Thanksgiving. For sponsorship purposes, the tournament is of ...
in The Bahamas). In turn, this has led to the use of "true road game" to refer to contests played at one team's home venue.


Association football

In some
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 ...
leagues, particularly in Europe, the away team's fans sit in their own section. Depending on the team's stadium, they will either sit in a designated section or be separated from the home fans by a cordon of police officers and stadium officials. The reason of this arrangement is to prevent conflicts between fans in rival teams, which is a real concern in European association football leagues due to football hooliganism. However, in the semi-professional leagues in England, supporters may be free to mix. When games are played at a neutral site, for instance the FA Cup final in England which is always played at Wembley Stadium, both teams' fans will be allotted an even number of tickets. This results in each team occupying one half of the stadium. This is different from other sports, particularly in North America, where for the most part relatively few fans travel to games played away from their home stadium. (There are exceptions for teams with large fan bases like the
Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. Founded in , the Steel ...
.) Home and away fans are also not separated at these games.


See also

* Home (sports) * Away colours


Notes

{{reflist Terminology used in multiple sports