{"title":"Do Fans Impact Sports Outcomes? A COVID-19 Natural Experiment<sup>∗</sup>.","authors":"Jeffrey Cross, Richard Uhrig","doi":"10.1177/15270025221100204","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper studies the effect of fan attendance on home field advantage in top European soccer leagues. We exploit exogenous variation in the level of fan attendance driven by COVID-19 mitigation policies and find that the home field advantage, as measured by home minus away (expected) goals, is reduced by more than 50% across the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and Spanish La Liga. This leads to a decrease in probability for a home win, indicating that these goals are pivotal with respect to match outcomes.</p>","PeriodicalId":51522,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Sports Economics","volume":"24 1","pages":"3-27"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9121146/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Sports Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/15270025221100204","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper studies the effect of fan attendance on home field advantage in top European soccer leagues. We exploit exogenous variation in the level of fan attendance driven by COVID-19 mitigation policies and find that the home field advantage, as measured by home minus away (expected) goals, is reduced by more than 50% across the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and Spanish La Liga. This leads to a decrease in probability for a home win, indicating that these goals are pivotal with respect to match outcomes.
期刊介绍:
Journal of Sports Economics publishes scholarly research in the field of sports economics. The aim of the journal is to further research in the area of sports economics by bringing together theoretical and empirical research in a single intellectual venue. Relevant topics include: labor market research; labor-management relations; collective bargaining; wage determination; local public finance; and other fields related to the economics of sports. Published quarterly, the Journal of Sports Economics is unique in that it is the only journal devoted specifically to this rapidly growing field.