how does home court advantage work
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Basically, it’s a place where the team lives and practises every day so they know it like the back of their hands. Another team just does not have that familiarity with the court, or wherever
Oftentimes the fans are called the sixth player (or equivalent depending on which sport). Fans will cheer, boo, chant etc which hopefully affect the players motivation. It can also affect a referees calls. If tens of thousands of people boo your decisions, perhapsyou will lean in favor for calls towards the home team.
Also, in certain sport, for example hockey, the home team will have their player booth in an advantageous position in two of the periods and they get to call line changes first.
When you play in your home town, you have your local fanbase with you. Also, you don’t have to travel, so you can stay home and relax before the game. Traveling is surprisingly taxing.
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The vast majority of seating in the arena/stadium is reserved for fans of the ‘home’ side. So you enjoy the benefit of 80% of the spectators cheering for you.
An interesting illustration of this is in Italian football/soccer. Two clubs, AC Milan and Inter Milan, actually share a stadium. As per the standard fixture list, they play against each other twice a season. In one game, AC Milan is ‘home’ and in the other, Inter is ‘home’.
How does that work since they the stadium belongs to the two of them? The crowd. When AC Milan is ‘home’, they get to fill 75% of the stadium and decorate it accordingly. The Inter players, even though they’re playing on a very familiar field, suddenly feel like the place is now hostile against them.
That’s a big part of how home advantage works.
Although the teams strive to be generally fair on the court or on the turf there’s always gonna be small imperfections that one team will know about and the other team will learn about through playing.
There are often subtle digs, such as the away team locker room not being as nice, not having as much padding on the seats, having the dugout for the away team face into the setting sun, etc. These things are not illegal to do and they can impact a visiting team just a little bit and sometimes it’s all that is needed.
As far as I know there aren’t any clear reasons why this happens (I mean I haven’t seen studies done on whether reason A offers a stronger advantage than reason B etc). But we do know it exists simply based on the fact that teams statistically perform better at home than away.
It could be any or all of the following:
– not having to travel far
– knowing your environment well (how the wind blows or where the sun shines from etc)
– supporters and family
The advantage is not having to travel, spending time in hotels, bus to the location and having your fans cheering you on
Lots of reasons.
Better morale, with more of your own fans, plus the mindset of “this is my turf.”
Familiarity with the court/field, even if the differences are minor.
Umpires/referees *may* have *slight* biases.
No travel = no jet lag or sore butts.
Less chance of forgetting your favorite bat/jersey/girlfriend/lucky rock/etc
In addition to other things mentioned (familiarity of home court, fan support, less travel, referee/umpire bias), in baseball specifically, there’s also an inherent advantage of batting second as the home team gets to do: in the ninth or extra innings, if behind, you know how many runs you need, so you can often shift your strategy to play for that many runs rather than having to try to score as many runs as possible.
Also, in some stadiums, the home team’s amenities are nicer.
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