Calculating the Home Advantage in Soccer Leagues

• Authors: Miguel-Ángel Gómez , Richard Pollard
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

A recent article published in the Journal of Human Kinetics (Saavedra et al., 2013) was based on a flawed methodology when calculating the home advantage values in soccer leagues. This led to incorrect calculations, false conclusions and some misleading results about home advantage in 52 soccer leagues of UEFA countries over a 10 year period. The aim of this letter was to explain these flaws and to make sure future research would not be influenced by the subsequent results and conclusions that had been presented

• Journal: Journal of Human Kinetics
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 40
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 5-6

Dates

published

1 - 3 - 2014

online

9 - 4 - 2014

Contributors

author

Miguel-Ángel Gómez

• Faculty of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain,

author

Richard Pollard

• Department of Statistics, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, USA

References

• Pollard R. Home advantage in soccer: variations in its magnitude and a literature review of the inter-related factors associated with its existence. J Sport Behav, 2006a; 29: 169-89
• Pollard R. Worldwide regional variations in home advantage in association football. J Sport Sci, 2006b; 24: 231-240
• Pollard R, da Silva CD, Nísio CM. Home advantage in football in Brazil: differences between teams and the effects of distance traveled. Brazilian J Soccer Sci, 2008; 1: 3-10
• Pollard R, Gómez MA. Home advantage in football in South-West Europe: Long-term trends, regional variation, and team differences. Eur J Sport Sci, 2009: 9: 341-352[WoS]
• Pollard R, Gómez MA. Comparison of home advantage in men's and women's football leagues in Europe. Eur J Sport Sci, 2012; Epub, ahead of print [WoS]
• Saavedra M, Gutiérrez O, Sa Marquez P, Torres G, Fernández JJ. Calculating home advantage in the first decade of the 21th century UEFA soccer leagues. J Hum Kinet, 2013; 38: 141-150[WoS]
• Sánchez PA, García-Calvo T, Leo FM, Pollard R, Gómez M. An analysis of home advantage in the top two Spanish professional football leagues. Percept Motor Skill, 2009; 108: 789-797[WoS]
• Seckin A, Pollard R. Home advantage in Turkish professional soccer. Percept Motor Skill, 2008; 107: 51-54[WoS]

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/hukin-2014-0001