No Fans-No Pressure
Referees in Professional Football During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5285078 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Christian Leitner (0000-0002-9341-854X, University of Salzburg, corresponding author), Fabio Richlan (0000-0001-5373-3425, University of Salzburg) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 3 |
| Pages | 720488-720488 |
| Publication date | 2021-08-19 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Frontiers in Sports and Active Living (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2624-9367 • E-ISSN: 2624-9367 |
| Publisher | Frontiers Media SA (PUBLISHER • CH) |
| DOI | 10.3389/fspor.2021.720488 |
| PMID | 34490426 |
| OpenAlex | W3186463546 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 36 |
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, European elite football (a.k.a. soccer) leagues played the remaining season 2019/20 without or strongly limited attendance of supporters (i.e., "ghost games"). From a sport psychological perspective this situation poses a unique opportunity to investigate the crowd's influence on referee decisions and the associated effect of "home advantage." A total of 1286 matches-played in the top leagues of Spain, England, Germany, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Austria and the Czech Republic-were analyzed for results, fouls, bookings and reasons for bookings and contrasted between respective matchdays of season 2018/19 (regular attendance) and season 2019/20 (ghost games). Following recent methodological developments in the research on the home advantage effect, four different statistical analyses-including Pollard's traditional method-were used for the assessment of the home advantage effect. There are two main findings. First, home teams were booked significantly more often with yellow cards for committing fouls in ghost games. Most importantly, this effect was independent of the course of the games. In contrast, bookings for other reasons (criticism and unfair sportsmanship) changed similarly for both home and away teams in ghost games. Second, the overall home performance and home advantage effect in the respective elite leagues-identified in the respective matches of the regular 2018/19 season-vanished in the ghost games of the 2019/20 season. We conclude that the lack of supporters in top European football during the COVID-19 pandemic led to decreased social pressure from the ranks on referees, which also had a potential impact on the home advantage. Referees assessed the play of home teams more objectively, leading to increased yellow cards awarded for fouls committed by the home teams. Since there were no significant changes in referee decisions against the away teams, we argue that our observations reflect a reduction of unconscious favoritism of referees for the home teams
Advertising · Attendance · Business · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Czech · Demographic economics · Economics · Elite · Football · Geography · League · Political science · Law · Medicine · Psychology · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports Analytics and Performance · Sports, Gender, and Society
Futbol Taraftarlarinin Pandemi̇ Kisitlamalari Dönemi̇ Taraftarlik Deneyi̇mleri̇
Subjective experience, self-efficacy, and motivation of professional football referees during the Covid-19 pandemic
Home Games and Social Media Performance of Sport Clubs
Balancing economic and social results in football clubs
Influence of crowd size on home advantage in the Japanese football league
Can socio-cultural predictors help explain the home advantage gap in European men’s and women’s football
Visitors Out! The Absence of Away Team Supporters as a Source of Home Advantage in Football
Understanding fan pressures and its impact on football club sustainability
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |