Do Fans Impact Sports Outcomes? A COVID-19 Natural Experiment∗

Jeffrey Cross and Richard Uhrig

Journal of Sports Economics, 2023, vol. 24, issue 1, 3-27

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.

Keywords: home field advantage; soccer; COVID-19; fan attendance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jospec:v:24:y:2023:i:1:p:3-27

DOI: 10.1177/15270025221100204

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