How will empty stadiums continue to affect football results?
Over the next few months, we will see football played as it has never been seen before – in the absence of fans.
The sport is set to return to action over the coming weeks on a wider scale: the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and EFL Championship look set to restart at various points in June, whilst the Bundesliga is already underway. Fans, pundits and punters alike will rejoice at the sight of their favourite teams once again gracing the turf, albeit from the comfort of their own living rooms.
However, not everything will be back to normal. Those who have been keeping an eye on the Bundesliga since the restart will be slowly growing familiar with the haunting emptiness of the stadia in which the matches are staged. The banning of fans from grounds is of obvious disappointment to any season-ticket holder, away-day traveller or those who enjoy atmosphere whilst watching televised matches. But the lack of fans throws up deeper questions about the upcoming fixtures. Will the new format affect home-field advantage? Which teams could suffer the most? Can we use underlying stats to predict what will happen?
The theory behind home-field advantage is well established. The home team has the psychological benefit of being backed by thousands of people, in addition to the negative psychosomatic effect that the home supporters can have on the referee and the opposition. The physiological factor of playing in familiar surroundings might also play a slight part, as might the negative effect of rigorous travel on the opposition team.
But how much does home-field advantage actually affect the outcome of any given match?
Oddschecker have compiled the leading bookmakers’ pre-match odds from every game in the 2018/19 Premier League campaign in a bid to determine how great the effect of home-field advantage truly is. When all the matches are averaged out, the bookies predicted that the home team had a 45% chance of winning, whilst the away team would emerge victorious on just 32% of occasions. Thus, playing at home gave a team a 13% greater chance of winning than playing away, all other things being equal.
It might be useful to note that not every team benefits the same amount from playing in front of their own fans. The below shows that some teams hardly see any difference between playing at home or away. Take Manchester City as an example: oddschecker’s data shows that the bookmakers gave them an average of 81.49% chance of winning when playing at home, compared to a 72.51% chance of winning when playing away – a difference of just 8.98% between the two. Compare that to Arsenal, who on average had a 59.56% chance of winning at the Emirates and a 40.95% chance of winning on the road – a whopping home advantage (or away disadvantage) of 18.61%.
Now that we know the typical impact that home advantage has on the outcome of results, we can make a comparison with the Bundesliga matches since the restart. There have been three gameweeks completed so far, and these are the only competitive league matches on record to have ever taken place without fans.
Of the 27 matches played since 16th May, only five have been won by the home side. This means that only 19% of games have been won by the team playing on their own turf, less than half the “normal rate” at which the home team could be expected to win – 45%, according to oddschecker data.
Conversely, 12 of the 27 games played since the re-start have been won by the away side (44%), compared to the average rate of 32% implied by the oddschecker data. Over the course of these matches, the away teams have scored 49 goals (1.81 per game) whilst the home sides have managed just 35 (1.30 per game) – and the home teams’ goals per game stat dips below 1.00 if you exclude Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund games.
Of course, the sample of matches from which were are drawing this data is still small, but a trend certainly seems to be emerging that home teams will struggle in this new, post-COVID set-up.
If this trend were to continue, which teams might feel the impact most heavily?
In the Premier League, the title is all but Liverpool’s – and they’ve had good fortune in that they’ve already played more home games than most of their rivals, including two more than Manchester City. At the other end of the table, Aston Villa will be disappointed with this trend seeing as they have a greater proportion of home games left than their other relegation rivals.
In La Liga, Barcelona will be grateful that they’ve already played more home games than Real Madrid, allowing them to see more of the true benefit of home advantage. Meanwhile in Serie A, Juventus are one point ahead of Lazio but will be disappointed to have played one home game less before the break.
Only time will tell how the lack of fans affects the outcome of football matches. It is uncertain when supporters might be allowed back in stadia. In the meantime, the eyes of the footballing world will certainly be keeping a look out for how damaging the effects of the new normal will be for home teams.
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