 Home advantage in professional soccer and betting market efficiency: The role of spectator crowdsKai Fischer and Justus Haucap Kyklos, 2022, vol. 75, issue 2, 294-316 Abstract: Fan support has often been considered to be a main driver of the home advantage in sports. Using the “natural exper‐ iment” of ghost games during the COVID‐19 pandemic in German professional soccer and a dataset of 6,120 matches ranging over the seasons 2011/2012 to 2020/2021, we test this claim. Indeed, applying a difference‐in‐differences setup, we identify a reduction in the home performance ‐ though with much heterogeneity across leagues and teams. We, moreover, observe the home advantage to recover over time. In analysing whether betting markets anticipated this drop in the home advantage and its recovery, we test the efficient market hypothesis. In the short‐run, betting odds do not properly reflect the effect of ghost games regarding changes in the home advantage but they suitably account for it in the long‐run. Also, league heterogeneity is efficiently captured in the odds. Based on these findings, we show how simple, short‐run betting strategies could have exploited the discussed phenomenon. Our findings also have implications for agents' behavior on financial markets in the presence of unforeseen and unfamiliar shocks. Date: 2022 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:kyklos:v:75:y:2022:i:2:p:294-316 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Kyklos is currently edited by Rene L. Frey More articles in Kyklos from Wiley Blackwell |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.