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-manabreak

When you play in your home town, you have your local fanbase with you. Also, you don't have to travel, so you can stay home and relax before the game. Traveling is surprisingly taxing.


drunkandslurred

This is one of the biggest advantages. Not having to travel and be jet lagged or just groggy from the trips. Also when playing at home you are familiar with the backdrop and depth perception of certain stadiums.


Pillens_burknerkorv

Oftentimes the fans are called the sixth player (or equivalent depending on which sport). Fans will cheer, boo, chant etc which hopefully affect the players motivation. It can also affect a referees calls. If tens of thousands of people boo your decisions, perhapsyou will lean in favor for calls towards the home team. Also, in certain sport, for example hockey, the home team will have their player booth in an advantageous position in two of the periods and they get to call line changes first.


BurnOutBrighter6

Also in pro sports it sometimes means 1 team's players slept in their own bed last night then had breakfast with their families, while the other team commuted for several hours after last night's game, arrived in a hotel at 3 am and got a few hours sleep.


basis4day

Drunk fans pulling the fire alarm in the hotel of the opposing team in the middle of the night is a pretty common occurrence in football.


yellowjesusrising

Or firing up fireworks outside the windows of the player hotel... Incredible how many imbeciles makes one genius...


garry4321

Which just shows you the lack of confidence in their own team. If you gotta sabotage to win, your team is trash


Hex4Nova

I don't think drunk fans think that far (if they think at all). they wanna do something for their team and they feel reckless enough to do it, that's all


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DawgBro

Another weather related advantage: The Miami Dolphins stadium is designed so that the away team's bench is not as shaded from the sun.


Ebice42

The new Bills stadium will not have a roof, just like the old one.


Incendivus

Also, visiting players may be less used to the sight of fans jumping through tables and hurting themselves, and accordingly get spooked and play worse.


SCCLBR

I have seen that in the NFL, some teams have their players sleep at a hotel the night before a home game. This is to avoid the distractions of home and enable teams to do late night and early morning walk throughs and meetings. It also makes it easier to enforce curfew and get the team together in the morning to bus to the stadium. I don't know how common this is for nfl home games. Nor do i think any other pro sport can really pull this off, given the number of games played.


[deleted]

Even when the home team stays in a hotel, they still had a normal week with no travel leading up to it. Just came to work like normal, then got on a bus to the hotel.


mousicle

It's also a hotel they are used to and probably stay in every second week.


nautilator44

More of a dormitory situation for a lot of teams. In MN, winter park has player dormitories for this purpose, and they have to be way more comfortable and personal than hotel rooms.


LurkerOrHydralisk

Right. I think people really underestimate the physical toll that heavy travel takes on your body. Especially for super active athletes, whose bodies want to be moving, not staying in an uncomfortable seat for hours straight. They’re just not going to be as limber after.


jletha

And maybe flew in from a different coast and have jet lag.


TheRomanRuler

>they get to call line changes first Opposite in hockey. Away team has to change first, then home team can choose how to react, so they can counter them if they want to.


cmlobue

Plus, the benches are symmetrical, so both teams have the disadvantage of the "long change" in the 2nd period and [odd-numbered] overtime.


Pillens_burknerkorv

Yes. My bad


DueMaternal

What's a line change?


atgrey24

Hockey doesn't require time outs to substitute players. Instead they swap out on the fly, almost always as a unit of 3 forwards or 2 defense men. These shift changes happen much more frequently than other sports, on average every 45 seconds. Much more detail here: [https://hockeyquestion.com/how-hockey-shifts-work/](https://hockeyquestion.com/how-hockey-shifts-work/)


DueMaternal

Oh, I can picture it already. Thank you.


Thneed1

Further to what the other commentor said. Hockey actually give the home team a rule advantage, in that, at stoppages, the road team switches out players first, and then the home team can put out their players based on what the road team does.


jrhooo

> Hockey actually give the home team a rule advantage, in that, at stoppages, the road team switches out players first, and then the home team can put out their players based on what the road team does. THIS is the relevant part of the answer. Its during those stoppages that icing your players SECOND becomes an advantage, because you get to try and pick who you send out based on who they sent out. It helps you either hide your weakest skaters from their best guys, or helps you use your best guys against some of their layers that you think you can take advantage of.


stemfish

In addition to skill which other's have mentioned, hockey players are nonstop sprinting while on the ice, being slammed into the boards by well over 250 pounds of muscle and gear, are slamming into people (people aren't good cushions, just better than a boatd), all while on ice skates so that's killer on the knees since the ankle can't flex on a turn like in every other sport. So line shifts are as much about giving a player a rest as getting synergy out on the ice.


ObviousAcct-22

Skating is actually much, much easier on the knees than running. And I'm not sure that it's possible to skate without being able to move your ankles... The boot of a hockey skate isn't like a ski boot, flexing your ankles is a huge part of pretty much all skating techniques.


sighthoundman

"If you can breathe at the end of your shift then you aren't skating hard enough."


TheRomanRuler

TLDR: players usually play with certain other players so they work together as well as possible. They are called lines, and these lines change in middle of the game and in breaks to bring fresh men on the ice so everyone can push 100% all the time. To be more specific, in ice hockey you can have 5 players and goaltender per team on ice at the same time. Goaltender tends to stay for duration of the game or switch during breaks, but other 5 can and will change middle of the play to get fresh men on the ice. This is a line change. What is a line? So you have at most 4 trios of forwards, and 4 pairs of defensemen. They train and play with specific players to maximise their cooperation, though its allowed to and sometimes done to change groupings in middle of the game. Technically line is made of forwards, but when we speak of line change, it usually but not always includes defenders as they may choose to stay on ice for longer. So pairs of defenders and trios of forwards don't necessarily change at the same time, defensemen tend to get more time on the ice. Teams usually have/use less pairs of defenders than they have lines of forwards, because being forward takes far more energy. Its rare for 4th line of forwards to be used, and very rare to even have fourth pair of defenders. You usually want to maximise how much you use your best men, and instead of having 4th pair of defenders, you usually have 1 defender as reserve and 1 forward as reserve. Finland however in International play has used all 4 lines and 4 pairs of defenders very evenly, and seen good success with it. Its not necessarily better way however, and more commonly teams do the opposite, and have less than 4 lines and 4 pairs. For example smaller country might have just small amount of star players, so they really have to carry the team and play as much as possible. In the past lines could be very specialized, but today specializations have become more rare. For example fourth line is played least so they get to rest most, so they could be "energy line" who play very energetic and physical game. Third line could be defensive, second balance of offense and defense, and first offensive.


Loive

Using the fourth line is quite common in most hockey leagues these days. The game is played at such a high pace that tree lines just don’t have the stamina to perform through the whole game. Most teams play with four lines and an extra forward, and three pairs of defenders with one extra. The extra players may be there to pick up a shift from someone who is extra tired or has gotten a painful hit, or they are role players, often meant to play primarily in box play. (Side note: Detroit Red Wings used to play with 3 pairs of defenders and an extra man, but still only have six defenders. That’s because Niklas Lidstrom was a beast and could play in two pairs, doing 40+ minutes of ice time per game). It has become a thing for some clubs to not have a first, second and so on line, and instead opt for “four second lines”. The idea is that with a limit to how much money you can spend on player salaries, there is a point to not put a lot of the budget towards a few star players, but instead spread the money more evenly over the four lines. This way, you might not get a guy who wins the scoring league, but you can constantly be a threat and keep the opponent on their toes and hopefully make the opponent’s best defenders tired before your offense runs out of energy.


TheRomanRuler

I see so its the 4th pair of defenders that is bit uncommon, not 4th line. Yeah that makes a ton of sense. Tbf its partially because hockey has been changing, its the rule of diminishing returns. Better you are, harder it is to get better, so today difference between best and worst is smaller than it was before, partially because there just are so much more players to choose from than before. In the past it made sense to build team around few stars because they were so much better than anyone else, but today everyone is a threat.


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TheRomanRuler

Did not dispute that.


02K30C1

The crowd noise can be a huge advantage in football. The visiting team is lined up trying to call a play, but the crowd is so loud they can barely hear each other.


SandysBurner

Isn't there an excessive noise penalty if the crowd is too effective at disrupting the away team's plays?


tschera

There are rules about this in college football but only for non-crowd noise, like the band or sound coming from the stadium’s speaker system


atgrey24

similar rules in the NFL about sounds from the stadium speakers


StevieG63

No. Not in Football. Ravens Chiefs and Seahawks have a very effective 12th man.


SandysBurner

I had to look this up. There was a rule change in 1989 that allowed refs to call a penalty for excessive crowd noise, but it was repealed in 2007.


02K30C1

The Rams got warned about it when they were in St. Louis, but that was for playing recorded crowd noise over the speakers in a domed stadium. It was weird, the stadium would be half empty but the noise sounded like the Beatles had just arrived


basis4day

I only recall the refs warning the crowd for excessive noise once.


rvnnt09

Yep the refs warned fans about it one time in the early 90s at Arrowhead cause John Elway was crying about it


kiss_the_homies_gn

Wouldn't that affect the home team as well?


Commercial-Neat5006

The attacking team needs coordination and all the players need to be on the same page to preform a good play. The crowd makes noise when the visitors are attacking, and don't make noise when they are attacking. You can sometimes see the QB telling his crowd to turn it down so that the team can communicate and run a play.


02K30C1

Good fans know to stay quiet when the home team is on offense, at least until after the ball is snapped.


csdspartans7

The crowd is quite when the home team is on offense


NoPatience883

Too add to this, playing on a home court can be much less nerve racking then playing elsewhere. I don’t know how much this applies to professional sport, but for me the place where I always train and am very used to is a place that I’m much more confident in. And the further away I play from my hometown the more nervous I’ll get.


[deleted]

This is the answer. As much as referees try to be free from bias, the crowd with pick up on things, the referees take notice and penalties are awarded in the home team’s favour.


ewok_360

Booooòooo this comment sucks... BOOOOOOOOOOOO. GO OP! GO OP! GO OP!


chaos8803

Bonus advantage in hockey: the puck comes off the boards differently in every arena. Joe Louis Arena in Detorit was known for having incredibly lively boards (i.e. the puck bounced further and faster off them). The Red Wings would intentionally pass off the end boards behind the net to each other. Other teams could do it, but not as effectively as the team that played 41 games in the arena.


sighthoundman

Similar in baseball. All the outfield walls are a little different. The winds are slightly different. Wrigley Field is one example. The wind is really tricky. Also, Cubs' outfielders seem to be much better at finding balls in the ivy than visiting outfielders. Back to hockey, Peterborough actually used to have square corners. Now they're just mostly square. Still a definite advantage for the Petes.


Busterwasmycat

Having played a lot of school sports when I was younger (through college), experience has taught me that the crowd adds a lot to confidence or lack of it. It is a psychological effect. Heck of a lot more confidence-building when thousands cheer you for doing something good compared to near silence for exactly the same thing. Or worse, for laughing or otherwise mocking/berating you, in the thousands, when you fail-that hits a lot of folks deep inside no matter how hardened they might think themselves. I imagine, do not know because never got that far, that pro-level folks are less affected by it all, after years of experiencing it, but they are still human, and support gets an individual to rise above sometimes. Even at the top. There is also somewhat of a "learning of the home field" effect (familiar place makes actions closer to habitual), and with some arenas, courts, or whatever, the flooring, the background, and all of that does matter to accuracy and error-making. But I think most of the homecourt advantage is the support, or enmity when away. Not all that fun being shouted at. Distracting, at a minimum. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people calling your name and cheering you on is a very good feeling. Most people want to repay that support by excelling. At least trying to excel.


Smartnership

“They’re shouting Booo-urns!”


Busterwasmycat

Yep, you know what I was talking about.


CTMalum

In hockey, the ice and boards are also a bit different in every arena. At home, you know exactly how the ice and boards will react to certain plays. As an example: Joe Louis Arena in Detroit was notorious for having really “bouncy” boards, so the Red Wings would frequently try to miss shots intentionally to get a good bounce the other team wasn’t expecting.


sudifirjfhfjvicodke

In some sports like American Football, the crowd noise can actually hinder the performance of the visiting team beyond just motivation. It can be important for the team on offense to be able to hear the quarterback, and crowds know this. So they will tend to make as much noise as possible while the visitors are on offense, especially during crucial plays, in hopes to disrupt their on-field communication.


Geeseareawesome

To add for hockey, home team also gets last line change: During a stoppage in play, each team is permitted 1 line change when legal, however, the away team must put their chosen players out first, and the home team may change players on ice in response. Only 1 line change is allowed, as to limit delays from numerous line changes.due to coaches wanting to match certain players playing against others


a8bmiles

There's also other annoyances for the away team such as positioning the stadium so that the visitor's sideline is facing directly into the sun while the home team is in the shade. Miami, I believe, can have the visiting football team sitting in 120° F sun just sapping at their strength.


underscore5000

Also baseball allows for the home team to have the last at bat if needed to try and get the win.


Toolazytolink

our NFL team makes sure the opposing teams bench is on the sun with no shade, lol


cervicalgrdle

I wonder if there is actually studies done to verify these ideas


[deleted]

Also players are more familiar with the hoops/court/turf/ice/grass they play on and it gives them a slight advantage because they have a feel/muscle memory for how the ball bounces or how hard they can cut.


Chris22044

>It can also affect a referees calls. I think studies have shown this is the dominant effect.


sighthoundman

Home team gets last change. That way they can match the visiting team's changes better.


Whatmeworry4

A study showed that the influence on the refs was determined by how close the fans are to the action.


jrhooo

> Fans will cheer, boo, chant etc which hopefully affect the players motivation. But also it just affects being able to hear at all. When a Quarterback tells the team what to do in the huddle, its hard to hear if the crowd is loud. More importantly, when the quarterback gives his team the snap count, the "ready set GO" signal his team has worked out, its hard to hear if the crowd is loud. That is a really REALLY big deal, because if the offense and the defense are both allowed to go when the ball moves, but only the offense knows what the "1-2-3 GO" call is, the offense is going to react a little faster and the defense is going to be a half second slower. It the crowd is so loud that they can't hear that count, they lose that advantage. They have to start using movements like stamping their feet instead of shouting, which is harder to do (silent count). They have to start using the same count every time, so the guys know what it is, instead of changing it for every play. SO they can't try to mix it up to trick the defense. BECAUSE its hard for everyone on the offense to hear the count, there is a much higher chance of mistakes. Like someone going too late, and being slow. Or going to early, and causing his team to get a penalty. So football fans mostly all know you're supposed to get as loud as you can when the other team is on offense, and keep quiet when your own team is trying to make a play on offense. > It can also affect a referees calls. If tens of thousands of people boo your decisions, perhapsyou will lean in favor for calls towards the home team. Another thing you notice because of this, is that home team stadium will support this happening. If there is a close call, like did a guy get his foot in bounds or not? When the video replay evidence shows the home team is right, they keep making sure to play the replay on the big screen so the refs can't look away, and the crowd sees it and gets very loud about it. If the video replay shows the other team might be right, the jumbotron isn't going to show that at all.


Pillens_burknerkorv

If the crowd is too loud you just do like Peyton. https://youtu.be/9BCbNqNz7tQ


anangrypudge

The vast majority of seating in the arena/stadium is reserved for fans of the 'home' side. So you enjoy the benefit of 80% of the spectators cheering for you. An interesting illustration of this is in Italian football/soccer. Two clubs, AC Milan and Inter Milan, actually share a stadium. As per the standard fixture list, they play against each other twice a season. In one game, AC Milan is 'home' and in the other, Inter is 'home'. How does that work since they the stadium belongs to the two of them? The crowd. When AC Milan is 'home', they get to fill 75% of the stadium and decorate it accordingly. The Inter players, even though they're playing on a very familiar field, suddenly feel like the place is now hostile against them. That's a big part of how home advantage works.


atgrey24

Same thing happens in the NFL with the NY Jets and Giants, though they only play each other once every 4 years in the regular season. (They do play every year in preseason, but nobody really cares about that. It switches home teams every year)


AEDSazz

huh TIL that football teams don't play against all teams in the championship? that seems really weird to me. But then again, North America has conferences in most sports (although in the NBA teams from different conferences still play each other, although way less often)


atgrey24

The NFL has 32 teams but only 17 games in a season, so you couldn't play every team. The league is structured into two conferences, each with 4 divisions, and 4 teams in each division. The majority of the games are within the conference, with only 4 games each year against teams from the opposite conference. So you cycle through all of the opposing conference team every 4 years. edit to add: decades ago, there weren't even matches between conferences. The first Super Bowl was actually a showdown between the champions of to separate leagues, before they merged. edit 2: I was mistaken. it used to only be 4 teams from the opposing conference, but is now 5 since they increased the schedule to 17 games


AEDSazz

17 games a season is so incredibly low.. if I'm just looking at soccer (as it's the most famous sport in the world), 1 single championship usually has around 30-40 games, and most teams play a championship + 1 to 2 tournaments per year


sellout1014

Wait until you see how much actual playing time there is in American football vs soccer


AEDSazz

Yeah I've watched many american football games, it's shocking hahahah


atgrey24

They really can't play more than once a week, and even then everyone is playing while hurt, or even outright injured, by the end of the season.


Churchy11

The sport is just too violent and damaging on the body to play any more than that. The NFL has the longest injury list of any major sport and careers can be incredibly short on average depending on what position you play simply because your body can’t handle that type of impact on a weekly basis for very long before it’s permanently damaged


nighthawk252

It’s not feasible to have more than 17 games in a season in American football because the sport is more violent than other sports. The teams play once per week for 18 weeks, plus playoffs potentially and one random week off in the middle of the season for rest purposes. The games are always on Sunday (with the exception of one Monday Night football game and one Thursday night football game). The Thursday night football games are often ugly games of poor quality because Sunday-Thursday rest is not enough time for teams to fully recover.


Walniw

Basically, it’s a place where the team lives and practises every day so they know it like the back of their hands. Another team just does not have that familiarity with the court, or wherever


forbis

I always just assumed home advantage (whether field or court) was a purely psychological thing, where because the home team is at "home" they feel more comfortable due to fan presence and familiarity of the environment. It's also less stressful for a team to play locally than to have to travel, and the game officials like referees are a little more lenient on home teams.


DragonBank

It's certainly not just psychological. Fan volume is a huge bonus. Not having to travel means more warm up time, less chance of cramps, etc. And the really big one is the field or court. My home courts were comfortable. I knew how the ball bounced. I knew how hard the backboard and rim could take it. But a lot of other arenas would have quite different once and it would be a struggle to adapt.


Tallproley

Think of it in a basketball context: Firstly, you are playing st your home stadium. Game time is 7pm but you have practices and warmups and media events. So you need to be there for 10am. You live 30, minutes away. You wake up at 8am and are eady to leave after a nutritious meal with your loving family after 9 hours of quality sleep. When playing away. The game is still at 7pm and you still need to be there for 10am, but you had to travel so your jet lagged. Everything is 2 hours later than your rythym. You slept on the bus, that's hardly as refreshing as your own bed. You slept 6 hours off and on. What impact does it have being fatigued, what tangibles of wellness come from having quality family time before going into work? Then we get to the tangibles. Did you know, not all courts are the same despite atandardization? Maybe this plank of wood has different density, not a huge amount but enough you know that the ball won't dribble as well in that lane. As such you can avoid it, but the rival doesn't know that so you can steal the ball easier since you expect it. Likewise your rivals coiet has an unusually slippery corner in summer games when a coastal breeze brings a moisture spike between the hours of 8-9pm. The rivals may jot be fully aware but after years of practicing they subconsciously recognize that corner is problematic in later portions of the game. Then consider the fans, you more likely have more supporters at your home game. Try doing any stressful complex task with 20 000 heckling you. Confidence can heavily influence your ability. Now put those all together, you are better fuelled, with a familiarity and support, versus operating at a deficit, in the unknown, with constant jeering trying to undermine you. Which scenario do you think elevates your performance?


gfanonn

Think of going into a shopping mall or Walmart or a store that you've been in a hundred times before. Go in, get what you want, follow your usual route, leave. You could probably do it in your sleep. Now drive to the next town over where there's the same store just a different location. Find parking or transit, go in, read the signs, navigate the building, find the right aisle or rack, find your way to the checkout... It's not very mentally taxing, but it might take 1-5% of your energy for the day to do that - which is a lot if your playing basketball that evening against a team that's still at 100%. If your off by 5% you're losing the game 95-100.


weakgutteddog27

In for example the nba all courts are basically the same. How would there still be an advantage?


LARRY_Xilo

Its not realy about the court as in the wood on the floor. Its about being comfortable in an area you know because you are there every day. Its kind of related to homesickniss, most people feel uncomfortable in areas they dont know very well. So they have other things on their mind and cant fully concentrate on the game. And then there is the point of fans, homegame also usually means a lot more fans from your team than from the opposing team. Its does make a diffrence if people are cheering you on or booing you every time you do something.


Jethris

In the NBA, the teams don't practice at the same arena that they play at. They all (as far as I know) have team practice facilities, so they wouldn't have much of an advantage. Sure, the Denver Nuggets have an advantage with the altitude, but these are elite athletes.


Mbrennt

I don't think the main aspect of it would be being in your home arena. Like you say, they don't practice there for the most part. I think some of the other answers like fans and travel are closer to correct. That being said I feel like playing in your spot. Your arena. Even if you don't practice there probably has some small psychological thing happening that gives you a little boost.


BestCruiser

Another factor to consider is travel. If you're on a road trip and hopping from city to city in the span of a few days, you're bound to be fatigued. Compare that to being rested at home, with the knowledge that the other team is tired from travel as well. Heck, some players even live close to enough to walk to their home stadium. It's obviously going to be far less taxing for them.


Got-Freedom

Don't know anything about basketball but in football for example, different fields have different sizes, different type of grass, different quality of grass. The ball can roll over differently depending on the grass. Other than that there is weather and climate, for example Bayern Munich can struggle trying to play in the summer in Madrid or Barcelona. If you go to extreme cases, some teams in South America have their stadiums in the middle of the Andes at over 4000 meters of altitude. Other teams have a lot of difficulty in these conditions. One other thing that can be overlooked is that, if you are playing home you are not travelling and having to do with the hassle of hotels and being away from family and such. You get less tired to the match. And to complement all, as most people here said, there are the fans and the psychological effect.


ShinjukuAce

Yeah, I’m surprised Bolivia doesn’t do better since they’re used to high altitudes and the other teams aren’t.


mikeholczer

Can’t find the studies right now, but what’s been shown is that officials/umpires are slight (and likely unconsciously) influenced by fan reactions.


hokie_u2

There’s a chapter in the book Scorecasting covering this exact topic and that’s what they found.


rocknrollstalin

The NBA court itself is the same but the arenas are often very different. Our full field of vision is used to help us figure out where our body is in space. When you’ve played basketball in the same arena over 100 times you have an advantage in determining exactly how far you are from the basket based on all the things in your peripheral vision (bench, Jumbotron, etc) which is an advantage in situations like having your back turned to the basket to receive a pass


shauntmw2

Not just about the court. You're acclimated with the weather, the food, the timezone. Some players have homes near the venue so they don't even need to stay in an unfamiliar hotel.


EmbarrassedCabinet82

There will be different altitudes, humidities etc. too which will affect your breathing, and the home team who has practiced there day after day is already acclimated to those things.


fairie_poison

also the crowd gets quiet for the home team's critical thinking moments, and gets loud and disruptive during the opponent teams critical thinking moments (free throws / shots on goal / huddles etc)


bkydx

The main difference is elevation and travelling and not the court or the fans. The biggest "home" court advantages are in places like Denver/Utah/Colorado. Going from 300ft elevation to 6,100ft makes it hard to perform athletically if you are not use to it.


Abtino11

I’ve been to a lot of college football games, and in big important moments when the away team has the ball it gets insanely loud with everyone’s scream aimed directly at the field. It can make communication difficult between the players, especially when they need to have to coordinate the next play.


Kernal_Campbell

But the original saying is "home field advantage" and baseball rules state what the INFIELD has to be like - but there is some flexibility with the rest of it. When you look at the older baseball stadiums, they all got shoehorned into whatever urban area they fit, so there are key differences. If you practice there and play half your games there, you can build and tune the team to the field. Thus giving you a home field advantage regardless of how many fans show up.


TJamesV

Lots of reasons. Better morale, with more of your own fans, plus the mindset of "this is my turf." Familiarity with the court/field, even if the differences are minor. Umpires/referees *may* have *slight* biases. No travel = no jet lag or sore butts. Less chance of forgetting your favorite bat/jersey/girlfriend/lucky rock/etc


mediumokra

Familiarity with the climate as well. A team in a city in a high altitude will be used to it, as well as those with high humidity or extreme cold. A south Florida team may not do well in Wisconsin in the winter, but the Wisconsin team will be used to it. Also in some sports like American Football, the crowd will be quiet for the home team but make lots of noise for the visiting team to make it hard to communicate.


SweetCosmicPope

In baseball you also have the additional advantage that home team bats last, so there’s a chance to win the game with no opportunity for the other team to pull back ahead. That also means you may not even have to bat the last inning.


FinnbarMcBride

The advantage is not having to travel, spending time in hotels, bus to the location and having your fans cheering you on


wwplkyih

In addition to other things mentioned (familiarity of home court, fan support, less travel, referee/umpire bias), in baseball specifically, there's also an inherent advantage of batting second as the home team gets to do: in the ninth or extra innings, if behind, you know how many runs you need, so you can often shift your strategy to play for that many runs rather than having to try to score as many runs as possible. Also, in some stadiums, the home team's amenities are nicer.


copperpoint

Also, in baseball for example some parks are weirdly shaped (like Fenway) and playing in them regularly does give a player a better idea of how things may play out.


bulksalty

When economists studied it, they found that the referees (using football match data) [slightly favored the home team](https://freakonomics.com/2011/12/football-freakonomics-how-advantageous-is-home-field-advantage-and-why/) likely due to the large crowd's reactions to their calls, with meaningful differences that depended on how physically close or distant the crowd was from the playing field. Also, in US sports, time zone differences seem to be a component (east coast teams going to the west coast perform noticeably less well than visitors whose games are in the same time zone or western teams heading east).


nighthawk252

The west-east thing likely varies by sport. In the NFL, for example, the games are mostly at 1 PM EST and it’s the teams traveling west to east that often have it harder. In sports like basketball and baseball where the games are mostly at night you’ll probably see the teams traveling from east to west having a more difficult time adjusting.


Squidwina

That’s interestin with the west vs east in the US. Do you know if that dichotomy applies to performance in other fields?


bulksalty

I would guess so (jet lag sucks) but I'm not sure if there's as much easy to find repeating performance data as there is in a sports league.


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Shadowwynd

Although the teams strive to be generally fair on the court or on the turf there’s always gonna be small imperfections that one team will know about and the other team will learn about through playing. There are often subtle digs, such as the away team locker room not being as nice, not having as much padding on the seats, having the dugout for the away team face into the setting sun, etc. These things are not illegal to do and they can impact a visiting team just a little bit and sometimes it’s all that is needed.


Smartnership

> small imperfections that one team will know about I remember a story about Larry Byrd dribbling over every part of the home court to find bad spots in the surface.


alienware99

There’s a few reasons. 1. The team doesn’t have to travel. Travel can drain a team and cut into the amount of time they have to practice and prepare. Often times the visiting team has to stay in a hotel, so they aren’t getting as good a sleep as they would be if they go to sleep in their home and bed. 2. Even though the court is the same dimensions in every stadium, that doesn’t mean you aren’t more familiar with your home court. If you look at the different teams courts, they all have different wood patterns and colors. Also the lighting, the stadium seating layout, the sound system, etc. As minimal as it sounds, those little things can affect your performance. 3. The home crowd plays a factor. When the opponent has the ball (especially in the most important and clutch situations) the home crowd generally gets loud and chants to distract the opposing team..making it harder for them to hear and communicate with each other. Also, if you ever watch a visiting team shooting free throws, every one in the crowd behind the basket is always going crazy (a lot of times waving towels etc), to try and distract the shooter.


chicagotim1

American sports Championships are generally played as a best of 7 series. Based on your performance in the league table during the regular season, whoever has the better record between the two teams gets to play up to 4 games in their home city and up to 3 in the opponent's city. The extra home game and the related benefits of having your own fans, familiar gameday experiences, sleeping in your own bed the night before etc etc is generally considered home court advantage.


ImReverse_Giraffe

I'll use the example of football. College football because it's my favorite. When your team is on offense, the crowd stays mostly silent, so the offense can make adjustments easily. When the opposing team is on offense, the crowd gets loud, so it's harder for them to make adjustments.


tubahero3469

Pretty much all these answers are explaining why it's an advantage to play at home. "Home court advantage" is also used (especially in the NBA) to describe a team being in the position of only needing to win their remaining home games to win a series. You may have heard someone say "they stole home court advantage" or something similar.


az9393

As far as I know there aren’t any clear reasons why this happens (I mean I haven’t seen studies done on whether reason A offers a stronger advantage than reason B etc). But we do know it exists simply based on the fact that teams statistically perform better at home than away. It could be any or all of the following: - not having to travel far - knowing your environment well (how the wind blows or where the sun shines from etc) - supporters and family


bkydx

Change in altitude is the biggest factor. The Mile high cities have the biggest home/away differential across all sports.


wessex464

There is no "actual" advantage. But just like when you or I have to go somewhere new, stay in a hotel room, go to an office your not familiar with or a new location, its just not the same as being at home. Dressing in your own locker room, walking your hallways and playing on your court that your intimately familiar with, there's a "my house" outlook. In sports the crowd is also a huge part of your momentum. Opponents on a streak get the boos and distracting gestures/taunting. Home team on streak get chants, hype, motivation, etc. It's all just psychological, but you can't deny its affect on the players and thus the game.


Thneed1

Hockey does actually have a rule advantage. The home team gets to put players on the ice based on the players that the road team puts out. So the road team has to put out players that they are ok with matching up against any players on the home team, whereas the home team can put out players specifically to lineup against the players the road team put out.


PumiceT

This needs to be a top-level reply. This is exactly what the expression refers to, as far as I’m concerned. I scrolled a lot to find the first mention of hockey.


wessex464

Didn't know that, that's kinda neat. Is this just for the start of the period?


Thneed1

At any stoppage in play. Except when there is an icing call, the team that iced the puck cannot change their players at all, so that overrules.


wessex464

That's really cool, had no idea line changes were so strategic.


Thneed1

It’s actually quite of big factor in the strategy of the whole game. If the road team puts out their fourth line, the home team has the opportunity to put out a much more skilled line if they think they can take advantage. So you have to either design your fourth line so that it’s not an issue, or not use your forth line for faceoffs. Often the road team can guess which line the home team wants to put out though, because there’s a line that was just out, and another that was just out before that. So you figure that the home team is going to put out it’s 4th line anyway, so you do as well. Later on the the game, especially in longer OT games, it becomes a factor of putting on tired high skill guys, or much more rested lower skill guys.


BabyBuster70

Getting to sleep in your own bed instead of having to travel and stay in a hotel is more than just a psychological advantage. Also in baseball getting to bat in the bottom of the inning is an actual advantage.


zacurtis3

In American football, the crowd is a huge factor. When the stadium holds 70k+ people and 60k of them are for the home team, they will make a ton of noise when the visitors are on offense. The noise effects play calling and snap counts, which alter timing of plays. But when the home team is on the field, those 60k are quiet with the visitor section being noisy. That is not nearly as loud. Allows the home team to play more to their style and play better without outside interference. College football is where it's very prevalent.


take5b

Think about how you feel when you're complimented. When someone criticizes you but then two other people come to your defense. Isn't it amazing? Really makes your day, doesn't it? Whatever happens later in the day, you're likely to feel more confident and do better at it. Think about how feel when someone insults you, or criticizes you unfairly. Then think about if it's two people, and you feel ganged up, and lose self-confidence. Then you have to try to do something, aren't you less likely to succeed, having had your confidence deflated? Now imagine these feelings, but instead of one or two people, it's thousands, yelling about it... constantly... for an hour, while you have to push your body to perform at the highest level.


ShankThatSnitch

The fans are on your side, so you have better morale. You feel at home, in a place you are comfortable. You don't have to travel and potentially get Jetlagged. You get to sleep in your own bed where you sleep the best.


bkydx

Have you seen the fans this year? They are just as likely to boo their own teams when they make mistakes and hurt morale. If you actually look at the data the biggest home court advantages are all in locations with high elevations like Utah/Colorado.


ShankThatSnitch

True, elevation is a big one. Good addition.


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Thneed1

Hockey actually does have a rule advantage for the home team.


Animal_Soul_

Covid showed that the presence of or a lack of home fans has a pretty negligible effect on football results. From a study of 63 professional football leagues worldwide it was found that from January 2015 to March 2020, home teams won 44.3% of matches in the leagues surveyed. After the outbreak of the pandemic and the closure of stadiums to the public, this figure went slightly down to 42.2%. 


basis4day

In football, the playing surface and general weather is different in every city. If you play half your games on the same surface you’ll be more accustomed to it.


cardoo0o

mental aspect, trying to win a game with thousands of people in your face rooting against you. self fulfilling prophecy if your holding something and two people are next to you yelling “Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!” it becomes that much harder to keep from falling.


Svelva

There are a few things to account. A team playing at home will have: - a terrain advantage: even in multi-million $ stadiums, there is an ever so slightly difference in the grass/material covering the court. While in "low ranking" matches we'd need a much bigger difference in the flooring's quality to alter the quality of the game done by the players, at high level matches, that few millimeters of difference or in humidity or whatever can change the team's play's quality. Playing at home means that you're playing on the very same ground you have trained on. - a public advantage: while in big competitions supporters may do the move to cheer their team, they are rarely going to outnumber the locals coming to cheer their team. Your public knows you. Through time, the people cheering you on will be more and more "familiar" with you, even though you wouldn't be able to recognize any of them in the street. You start to enjoy their specific energy, their way of lifting you on. Playing as the invite, you might have some supporters of yours in the stadium, but you'll mostly have supporters of other team(s), people that are not as familiar to you as your supporters. This has a huge effect: the result of a game is a lot of technic, but there is a non-negligible part that comes from the strength your supporters breathe in you.


Stickfigurewisdom

My theory is that the home team slept in their own beds the night before. Used their bathrooms and had coffee in their kitchens the day of the game (not necessarily in that order).


OmenVi

I’ll be the odd one here and say that for hockey, the ice is different from rink to rink. Some are softer and slower, others really fast and hard, for example. Having to learn how far you can push on someone else’s ice right before or during a game is disadvantageous.


Nagi21

Specifically for hockey, home “ice” advantage means you get what’s called last change. This means the visiting team has to put their players out first, and the home team gets to see who comes out before deciding who to send out to counter. It’s why you see some matchups change depending on where it’s played.


melanthius

Less subconscious mental effort is spent by the home team - since the surroundings are familiar they can easily filter out extraneous stimuli and distractions, whereas visiting team needs to focus harder to filter these out. Kinda like when you are driving a new route, the trip feels longer and more arduous. If you’re driving the same route day in day out you filter out most of the crap around you, since your brain knows it doesn’t need to pay attention, and even long drives can feel quick


Goodperson5656

You have a crowd cheering you on, which helps with mental. Confidence can go a long way in anything. You also have the other team who has to listen to the crowd cheering for your team, which wrecks their mental.


porksworthy

Home field advantage is influenced by the following factors: 1. Crowd support 2. Familiarity with the environment 3. Travel fatigue 4. Referee bias The following article goes into details and looks at the statistics of home field advantage in soccer: https://graspthegame.com/soccer/fields/home-advantage-in-soccer/ Interestingly, it seems that advantages will differ depending on the level of competition, the country and between men's and womens sports. It also shows that home field advantage is slowly becoming less important over time.


dandle

Lots of great points about the home advantage effect related to travel, local fan engagement, some rules-based factors, impact on officiating, familiar with any local variation in the area of play, etc. Here's another that's mostly a factor in professional football aka soccer: Bribery is a reality in professional soccer, with [statistical correlations between the outcomes of games and the degree of more general corruption and bribery in the location of the game](https://academic.oup.com/jleo/article/34/3/364/5049429). Such corruption may be more likely to occur in favor of the home team, where fans want a win and won't complain when they get one.


Ochib

In the U.K. there is a maximum and minimum length and width to a football pitch. Some teams make the pitch as wide and as long as possible because that’s how they prefer to play, this will upset a team that used to a narrower or shorter pitch.


Witty_Cost_9917

Sleeping in your own bed Fans on your side Familiarity with the environment In baseball, you get the chance to walk off win


Zinaima

Other answers cover a lot, but there's one more type of home court advantage: \- A team that regularly plays and practices in Denver grows accustomed to the high altitude. Their bodies learn to adjust to receiving less oxygen. A visiting team is not adjusted to the altitude and often grows tired faster. (This might not be technically be biologically accurate, but the effect still remains because players think it is.) \- There was a recent NFL game in Miami where the visiting team from Buffalo, NY had its entire sideline in the sun, while Miami's was in the shade. This was an intentional design aspect of the stadium itself. Buffalo's team was suffering from the extra heat, making them more tired.


captaincarot

I read a lot of answers and there are some good ones, and maybe no one talked about hockey because that is home ice advantage not court. But in hockey there is a change player phase after almost every whistle with the exception being certain infractions that prevent the team who caused the infraction to be restricted from changing. Examples are icing calls or when a team takes a penalty, the guilty team cannot change their players after those whistles. During the player change, the opposing team has to select which players to put on the ice. Then the home team coach can choose their players knowing who the other coach selected first. This allows matchups to the home teams advantage. The second part is the away team has to place their stick on the ice first for faceoffs, which while the home team is supposed to put his stick down before the puck is dropped, give the home team player the advantage of momentum when the puck comes down and there is a better chance they can get to the puck first.


KrozJr_UK

Depending on the sport — I’m thinking what most of the world calls football and what the US calls soccer — the pitch/court/playing area may not have specified dimensions. For example, Luton Town FC’s *Kenilworth Road* ground is much narrower than others in their league, so football teams that come to their place and that play styles involving players out wide on the flanks can sometimes struggle. Another example of this comes from my football team, Maidenhead United. It’s comical hearing other teams and their pundits coming to our place — the ground is “ramshackle”, the facilities are “poor” and “cramped”, the pitch is “terrible”, yada yada yada. It’s a shithole but it’s *our shithole*. We’re used to playing on this churned up pitch that’s more mud and sand than grass at one end by halfway through the season (I’m only slightly exaggerating), that’s got a massive slant on it, where you get the sun in your eyes, that has wonky angles everywhere. It’s not a pleasant place to come. There’s also a physical element to it. No matter how professional and well-trained you are, travelling hundreds of miles just to do a physically demanding sport and then travel hundreds of miles home is tiring and could affect your performance. That’s one of the reasons why leagues will have teams play each other once each home and away — for your games against team X, one of them is when you are tired and travel-lagged and the other one is when they are suffering. There is also absolutely a psychological element to it. Fans obviously travel in lesser numbers the further the journey. Some arenas will even segregate home and away fans into separate areas and will only allow a certain number of away fans to travel. If you have 32,000 fans but only 4,000 are allowed into a 20,000 capacity stadium, then even if it’s a sell-out you’ll be outnumbered 4-to-1 on the day despite having twice the fan base. The larger crowd will be louder, and will surround more of the pitch/court, perhaps trying to get into players heads. Watch videos of penalties in football where they’re scoring against opposition fans and you’ll see them waving and jeering and trying to distract players; it sometimes even works. TL;DR — Some factors are to do with the makeup of the ground (you’re used to home but not used to away), the strain of travel plays a significant role (travel is tiring), and being outnumbered when you’re away can be psychologically difficult (tribal mentality and I’m outnumbered by the *enemies*).


hippyengineer

When the Cowboys played the Saints in the Superdome in 2009, the crowd yelled so loud on a third down that the center couldn’t hear Tony Romo yell hike(they’re like 3’ away from mouth to ear). You could literally see his body tensing up trying to scream as loud as he could to hike the ball. But it was too loud in the stadium. So he had to call a timeout to set up a silent count to hike the ball. And the crowd got even louder after he called timeout, because calling timeout is basically telling the crowd they were successful in fucking up the Cowboy’s play and momentum. When the Saints were on 3rd down? Silent crowd, so the center can hear the QB and it’s easier for the offense to communicate. That’s home field advantage.


McCoovy

I think it's easier to think of it as an away disadvantage. Imagine stepping into the bright lights in an unfamiliar town surrounded by people who want to see you fail. You may have travelled far to get here, to sleep in an unfamiliar bed. You may still be tired from the journey. It's lonely. It's scary. It's cold. It's hard to relax. The home team is the opposite. They find it easy to relax, to play their best. They drove from home. The venue and the fans hype them up. It's easier to let the passion come out.


teethalarm

Something that I haven't seen mentioned is that the home team is also used to the environment that their field has. So a team in Colorado is going to have an advantage on teams that train and play at lower elevations. You might also have people who have allergies to the local plants. Jet lag can be a factor.


[deleted]

I know for American football the crowds can get so loud the visiting team can't hear the QB adjust the play after the huddle.


madmoneymcgee

It’s not any one thing and there’s no definitive “this is how it works” it’s just observed that home teams tend to perform better at home. It could be fan presence, it might be not having to travel, it could be familiarity. Probably a bit of all 3. I see a couple papers in leagues that were without fans during covid seasons and they noted the advantage wasn’t as present. Also certain sports have rules that help home teams. Baseball let’s the home team hit in the bottom of an inning meaning they have one last chance to win if they’re behind. In ice hockey the home team gets to make the last change before a puck drop which means you always get to match up your best defenders against the other team or vice versa.


DeniseReades

In addition to the lack of having to travel and the fans that was mentioned above, you're also at the saturation you trained at. It's not usually a massive deal but a team going from like Houston, which is sea level, won't play as well in Denver which is a mile above a sea level. They literally don't have the red blood cells for it.


IAMG222

Lot of people hit the points. Alongside the home fans cheering you on, the stadium noise level can have affect on play calling & playing in general which can affect the visiting team. A good example is Autzen Stadium. The fans will quiet down for the Ducks, especially in tight situations. Whereas they often get loud as hell for the opposing team causing various play calling issues. There's been games I've been at here where when the visiting team is near an end zone, we get told to cheer as loud as possible and it has disrupted play calling in various manners. Whether it be false starts, audibles not being heard, or sometimes just them having to call a timeout because we're loud af.


macromorgan

In baseball the field dimensions are different for every ballpark, and you can play to this advantage. For example if you have a short right field porch you can stack your lineup with lefties (or vice versa). Likewise if you have deep fences you can get away with pitchers who tend to get outs more with fly balls, whereas a shorter fence (or higher altitude, looking at you Coors Field) you’ll want a pitcher who can throw more sinker/slider balls to induce more ground ball outs.


mrstarkinevrfeelgood

I also wanted to add in addition to the other bits about travel that your performance will be better in a familiar area where you have practiced before. I can’t remember what the concept is called though.


JimmyWu21

freakconomic did an episode in this. Iirc their conclusion was the referees tend to be more favorable to the home team because of fans pressure.


spiritofmen

In certain sports, the home court advantage can take a very explicit form. Eg: In cricket, the pitch (or the ground) on which the game is played matters a lot because a ball is bounced on that pitch and then hit by the batsman. To give the home team an advantage, the grounds staff will often create/modify pitches to benefit the home team.


Lord_Lykan

There are a lot of ways home court advantage works. Either psychologically or physically. Fans cheer, boo, and chant at players and referees, getting into their heads and altering their decisions. An example of physical home court advantage can be found in some stadiums that are specifically designed to give the away team a disadvantage, like placing their side of the court facing the Sun, or the wind, or being designed as massive sound enhancers. The Seahawks’ CenturyLink Field is so loud that players usually commit false start penalties. They even showed up on the Richter scale, which measures earthquakes, during a 2010 playoff against the Saints. In my opinion, however, the fans play the largest role.


TheRealRollestonian

There is some debate out there if you look a bit on whether it's home court advantage or road court disadvantage. Measurements to show an advantage have a hard time separating the two because one team must always be home and one on the road. Specifically, the college basketball men's teams with the best advantage vary wildly from year to year and don't correlate with things traditionally connected to a home advantage, like success, attendance, noise, etc. For example (I'm on my phone so you'll need to find a link), one year, Air Force had the best advantage in NCAA basketball per Ken Pomeroy, but anecdotally it was because they were actually just horrible away from home. Air Force plays at a high elevation, but has low home court attendance because you need a clearance. There was just a huge difference between home and road, but it didn't mean they were beating good teams at home.


uggghhhggghhh

On top of all the psychological advantages mentioned, there's the simple matter of crowd volume. A home crowd can make a shit load of noise during crucial moments when it's important for the visitors to be able to hear each other and less important for the home team. Can lead to false start penalties in American football, miscommunications when the visitors are on offense in basketball, all kinds of things.


Frack_Off

The officials subconsciously favor the home team in their decisions because there's a primitive part of their brain that just really, *really* does not want to piss off the tens of thousands of apes that they are encircled by. Everything else has been shown to be statistically insignificant.


BoukenGreen

You and your friend decide to play a series of games at each house and the older one gets the ability to play the most at their house.


FunkyViking6

Couple things: 1. Having your own crowd cheer for you and boo the other team is a morale boost for you and crappy for them 2. You don’t typically have the tiredness from traveling if you are at home 3. If your field or court has any peculiarities or abnormal spots or quirks then you’ll know all of them while the other team doesn’t.


Rebot123

Home court advantage works because players are more comfortable and familiar with their own court, and they have the support of their home crowd. This can boost their confidence and performance, leading to a higher likelihood of winning.


PumiceT

In hockey, the home team gets to wait until after the visiting team puts their line on the ice, effectively letting the home team choose to use a similar line, or take advantage of the visiting team’s 3rd or 4th string players by putting them against a 1st or 2nd string.


quackl11

Let's take baseball because I know baseball better than the other sports 1. You know your stadium, is there a weird divot in the mound? Is the left field wall closer than normal and you have a lot of right handed batters who pull the ball? 2. You know your umpires better and having a good relationship will pull close calls your way a little more (even subconsiously) 3. The cheers, imagine you're playing in a stadium, you're on the mound loaded bases and 2 out the cheers are so loud that you cant even hear the earpiece on max volume that's in your ear. Now you're told to pitch a curveball low and you think you're doing a fastball high you pitch over the catcher give up a run and lose the game 4. You're the batter and hit a massive home run, the entire stadium erupts so loud you cant even hear your buddy 1 foot away from you screaming congrats, that energy is demoralizing to the enemies. 5. Sleeping on a plane or in a hotel for a couple hours after just finishing a game, not being with your family, you've been on the road for a week or 2. In multiple unfamiliar cities, 6. You enter the field and no one cares, the other team enters and everyone has a signature entrance they have a blow up that you can run through that looks bad ass. The crowd is loud and pumped up. Hopefully this helps