|
COPYRIGHT 2006 University of South Alabama
The home advantage in sport has been well documented in previous research, with a comprehensive review provided by Nevill and Holder (1999). One factor identified as contributing to the home advantage in sport is familiarity with the local playing facility (Pollard, 2002). This study compared home advantage during a team's last year in an old stadium to their first year in a new stadium. The records of thirty-seven North American professional baseball, basketball, and hockey teams that moved to new stadiums within the same metropolitan area between 1987 and 2001 were analyzed. The results showed a significant reduction in home advantage for teams performing in their first year in a new facility. Taking into account possible confounding factors such as crowd size and crowd density, Pollard quantified the effect of familiarity with the local playing facility as accounting for an estimated 24% of the home advantage.
Several previous studies have examined the effects on performance of moving into a new stadium. Quinn, Bursik, Borick and Raethz (2003) showed that Major League Baseball (MLB) teams significantly increased their overall winning percentage when moving to a new stadium, but teams from professional basketball (NBA), hockey (NHL) and football (NFL) did not evidence such an effect. Watson and Krantz (2003) documented a significantly increased home winning percentage for MLB teams moving to new stadiums, but not for teams in the NBA and NFL.
Loughead, Carton, Bray and Kim (2003) investigated the effect of moving to a new stadium by comparing home winning percentage in three time periods; immediately before the move, immediately after move, and following a period of relocation. Using a sample of 57 professional teams from hockey and basketball in North America and from soccer in England and Scotland, the authors found no significant differences in home winning percentage across the time periods. However, this analysis was based on a relatively small sample of games in each time period (8-10), and thus the lack of significant findings may have been affected by the different opponents for each team in the three time periods.
The present study seeks to extend previous findings on the home advantage. It should be noted that the method of analysis employed differs from the three aforementioned studies in its calculation of the home advantage. Rather than using purely a measure of home winning percentage, the analysis of home advantage used in this study is based on the percentage of...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
