is there any way in which this fact could affect a match by itself?
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They’re something comforting about being in familiar surroundings, surrounded by a bunch of people who are on your side. I can’t speak for European Football, but in the US I think they’ve found a lot of the “home field advantage” is actually from referees subconsciously making calls slightly favorable to the home side.
At a home game, the team has the support of their most vocal fans, which is a big psychological help for them. It’s also the place they know best.
The night before a game you get to relax at home and sleep in your own bed. No traveling on a bus or plane. Eat your fav meal. You know the grass or turf and all its nuances. All of your equipment, staff, and backups are right there. The fans know and love you. So many advantages playing at home!
In NFL football, the home crowd tends to be loud while the visitor is about to snap on offense and quiet while the home team is. It makes the visiting team more likely to have an mistake caused play calling timing or clarity. Also as fields vary (surface composition, weather) the home team is more accustomed to peculiarities of their own environment than the visitor is likely to be.
In hockey, the home team has ‘last change’ before faceoffs – the visitor has to commit which players are on the ice then the home team can choose the optimal matchup for that.
In baseball, the home team bats second each inning.
If I told you nothing about a sports contest but offered you even odds, if you always bet on the home team you would win by a small margin over time. Statistical analysis shows there’s a real advantage, although the degree differs across sports. It’s almost 70% in US major league soccer.
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/home-field-advantage-facts-and-fiction
There are multiple advantages to playing at home:
1) Noise. Your home fans will do everything they can to help the home team and inhibit the away team. So, when your team needs to communicate or focus, they will be quiet. When the visiting team needs to do the same, they will be as loud as possible. In many cases, it can get so loud on the field that they players literally cannot hear what anyone is saying unless they are within a few feet of each other and screaming as loud as possible. This can cause miscommunication, plays to go wrong, or even time outs to be called.
2) Travel. If you are playing at home, you don’t have to take a day to travel. That gives your team an extra day of preparation. You also get to sleep in your own bed instead of a hotel.
3) Facilities. Many stadiums have pretty crappy visiting lockers for the away team. They’re small, dirty, and dull. Some teams even go as far as to make it uncomfortable, such as the air conditioning is constantly “broken”. Imagine coming in during halftime when it’s hot outside, and your locker room is even hotter. You don’t get a chance to rest or cool down. That affects your performance.
4) Mental aspect. People tend to perform better when they feel like the hero instead of the villain. It’s easier to get hyped and perform well when 80,000 are cheering for you and celebrating with you. It’s a lot harder to perform well when 80,000 people are booing you and cheering for your failure.
The refs do get influenced by the crowd, but it’s not intentional. Also, there was a study done about soccer matches. The researchers found that the home field advantage was muted in stadiums that had a track around the pitch, presumably because the fans were farther back from the action.
https://freakonomics.com/2011/12/football-freakonomics-how-advantageous-is-home-field-advantage-and-why/
>So if these popular explanations don’t have much explanatory power for home-field advantage, what does?
In a word: the refs. Moskowitz and Wertheim found that home teams essentially get slightly preferential treatment from the officials, whether it’s a called third strike in baseball or, in soccer, a foul that results in a penalty kick. (It’s worth noting that a soccer referee has more latitude to influence a game’s outcome than officials in other sports, which helps explain why the home-field advantage is greater in soccer, around the world, than in any other pro sport.)
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Moskowitz and Wertheim also make clear, however, an important nuance: official bias is quite likely involuntary.
What does this mean? It means that officials don’t consciously decide to give the home team an advantage — but rather, being social creatures (and human beings) like the rest of us, they assimilate the emotion of the home crowd and, once in a while, make a call that makes a whole lot of close-by, noisy people very happy.
>One of the most compelling (and cleverest) arguments in favor of this theory comes from a research paper by Thomas Dohmen about home-field advantage in Germany’s Bundesliga, the country’s top soccer league.
Dohmen found that home-field advantage was smaller in stadiums that happened to have a running track surrounding the soccer pitch, and larger in stadiums without a track.
Why?
Apparently, when the crowd sits closer to the field, the officials are more susceptible to getting caught up in the home-crowd emotion. Or, as Dohmen puts it: The social atmosphere in the stadium leads referees into favoritism although being impartial is optimal for them to maximize their re-appointment probability.
At least in South America, playing visitor can be a living hell, specially if it’s a high stakes game like a clásico (derby) or a Copa Libertadores (our third world Champions League) match. It’s not uncommon for the visitor team to be pelted with trash or rocks from the stands, having power or water shortages on their lockers, or having fans from the local teams making noise outside the hotel the night before the match.
In NHL, there are actually rules that favor the home team. The home team gets the “last change.” Before each face off, the visiting team puts out their lineup, then the home team does. This lets the home team coach match their lines to the opponent. This could be to give an advantage in left/right handed forwards vs defence, or larger vs smaller, faster vs stronger players, or whatever other edge they are looking for.
Additionally, for centre-ice face-offs, the home team player at the face of circle is the last to choose their stick placement, which can give them the leg-up.
In the event of a shootout, the home team also gets to decide if they will shoot first or second. This definitely falls into the psychological category, however it’s still a rule that benefits the home team.
For Seahawks (American football team, seattle) – the year they won the Super Bowl they also had the record for the loudest stadium. Meaning, when the away team was on offense and the offensive players have to listen to their quarterback it becomes very difficult resulting in mistakes. When the home team (Seahawks) where on offense, the stadium was a lot quieter.
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