The Effect of Crowd Support on Home-Field Advantage: Evidence from European Football

Home field advantage exists in all professional games including professional football. Studies have revealed persistent home advantage across countries and divisions. Although crowd effects have regularly been cited as one of the potential causes of home advantage, the effect of crowd size and crowd density on home advantage has not been demonstrated in any football league. Objectives. The aim of this study was to demonstrate this effect using a new theoretical framework and binary logistic regression. Methods. Data collected for four seasons of five major European Leagues was processed. For this reason, 4 seasons and n = 8530 matches were analyzed starting from 2015 to 2019. Results. The model results suggest the presence of home-field advantage for all major European Leagues with varying degrees and varying shares attributable to the crowd support and crowd density. Conclusion. In the present study, it was found that crowd support and crowd density are of great importance for home-field advantage.