A History of Home Advantage
Home advantage is a much studied topic, and many people have offered suggestions as to where it originates: the motivational effect of playing in front of your own fans, the comfort of a familiar environment and match day routine, the possible influence of home fans on the referee (something that I want to come back to in a later post), the wearying effect of away team travel, or simply a higher expectation of home team success. It is present in many sports (see here ), in many countries (see here ). In future posts I’d like to take a more detailed look at some of the factors that might contribute to the home advantage effect, but first let’s start with some basic statistics: how big is the home advantage, how does it compare across the top four divisions in England, and how has it varied since the birth of organised football? Home Advantage 101 The table below shows the percentage of games won by the home team, away team and drawn in the last 21 years of the top four divisions