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- How best to quantify home advantage in team sports: an investigation involving male senior handball leagues in Portugal and Spain. [La mejor manera de cuantificar la ventaja de jugar en casa en deportes de equipo: una investigación con ligas de Balonmano senior masculino en Portugal y España]Publication . Matos, Rui; Amaro, Nuno; Pollard, RichardHome advantage (HA), or the effect of match location, has been shown to play an important role in determining the result of a game. A method introduced over 30 years ago has enjoyed wide use. However, there is a possible problem with its interpretation. Although this can be overcome by rescaling the original value for HA, this paper introduces a somewhat different approach to quantifying HA, one that is derived by expressing home performance specifically as a function of away performance. The various methods are illustrated by analyzing HA for teams in the men’s professional handball leagues in Portugal and Spain for the 2016-17 season. Results show that the traditional and rescaled methods both ensure a maximum value of 100% for HA, while the new method can produce values well above 100%. Also, when HA is small, as in the case of goals scored and conceded, then values from the new method are about twice those from the rescaled method. However, when HA is larger, as in the case of most of the teams in the lower half of the Spanish league table, when based on points, the new method produces HA values which are much higher that the rescaled. This method provides a new dimension to consider when trying to quantify HA. It has the advantage of also being appropriate for the difference between goals scored and goals conceded. Choice of methodology will depend on the specific objective being sought when studying the effect of HA on performance
- Home-Advantage during COVID-19: An Analysis in Portuguese Football LeaguePublication . Matos, Rui; Monteiro, Diogo; Antunes, Raul; Mendes, Diogo; Botas, João; Clemente, João; Amaro, NunoCovid-19 pandemic forced, at the final rounds of 2019–2020 season, in many different sports leagues worldwide, teams to play without an audience. Therefore, the present paper aims to compare the home advantage score in the last ten rounds in the 2019–2020 season with the first 24 rounds in the same season using Pollard’s (1986) and Matos et al.’s (2020) methods. In addition, comparisons across different seasons (2016–2017; 2017–2018; 2018–2019 and 2019–2020) using the same methods were also analyzed. Results showed no differences (p > 0.05) between first 24 rounds and the last 10 in 2019–2020 season as well as in the 3 previous seasons. With Pollard’s method, no differences (p > 0.05) were also found among those four seasons on global (all 34 rounds) home advantage. However, a significance difference between 2017–2018 and 2019–2020 (p < 0.05) was founded using Matos et al.’s (2020) method, which is an indicator of the importance of using complementary methods when analyzing the same realities. Overall, despite what might be expectable from recent findings, the lack of an audience in the last 10 rounds of Portuguese Football League 2019–2020 season, due to COVID-19 pandemic, did not affect home advantage. Therefore, future studies could try to analyze other different variables in Portuguese Football League, such as referees’ behaviors, rules changing (e.g., the possibility of making five substitutions, instead of three), crowd dimension and density as well as include variables about odds as forecasts in football being played without crowds.