It’s largely psychological. You’re more used to where you practice and so you don’t need to transpose those skills into a new environment. It’s just the same field you always use. Then there’s the benefit of having fans that will cheer you on instead of heckling you and calling you names. Positive reinforcement goes a long way even if you’re trained to tune most of the noise out.
Edit: people made some decent points, especially as it pertains to non-standard field arrangements as seen in Baseball, so I’ve changed “entirely” to “largely”
It’s the exact place they practice, so they’re already comfortable and know what to expect. Someone else’s field isn’t the same so wouldn’t be as familiar
Other than psychological benefits, In sports such as American football, crown noise can easily ruin opponents plays and cause false starts. There are a few tangible benefits, but mostly just mental benefits
In baseball it gives you the chance to bat last. You can adjust as necessary. In hockey you make the last line change so you dictate the matchups. In đ the crowd can sometimes disrupt play calling.
You sleep at home. The visiting team has to get on a plane and travel and sleep at a hotel and eat out. You are in your own time zone.
Your home field has a patch of grass that’s thicker than the rest on that one corner so the ball behaves weird there. Or you you’ll run different through it. Your home field has a slope to it that’s not quite even so it’s easier to kick the ball from one side of the field than the other. Your home field has a rocky area there just right of center, if you can get an opponent to fall there they’ll get hurt worse than other places.
Basically you’ve played on your home field enough that you’re very aware of its quirks. When you go to a different field, you know none of this but your opponent does.
In baseball it may matter more because ballparks are all different dimensions. So that if you have a short right-field porch, you may load your lineup full of left-handed hitters and your bullpen up with right-handed pitchers. Additionally if you have a pitching staff that likes to pitch to contact you might find the groundskeeper cuts the grass just a little bit longer so that ground balls roll slower.
When the referee or official is encircled by tens of thousands of screaming adult homo sapiens their lizard brain subconsciously makes decisions in favor of the competitor that the potentially violent mob overwhelmingly supports.
It depends on the sport. The crowd can warn the home team player of the location of an opposition player that the first player hasn’t spotted. They can make a lot of noise when the opposition are trying to communicate instructions. Sometimes the actual field is significantly different and playing on it regularly helps to understand what will happen on it during a match. Then there is a psychological effect of not wanting to let your fans down and they may cheer to pick you up or even boo if you perform badly.
Imagine doing your day job in your office youâre used to.
Imagine doing the same job one day but youâre randomly in someone elseâs office surrounded by strangers. In this office you had a much bigger commute and the colleagues donât want you to succeed and heckle you, etc.
Data demonstrate that home field advantage exists but the effects of it vary by era, sport, season length, geography, officiating, etc. I don’t think there are definitive data that universally shows WHY home field advantage exists.
Stanford was known to have an extra springy basketball court. Because they practice on it everyday, they’re more accustomed to it than their opponents.
When taking free throws in basketball, opposing fans often wave colorful banners to distract opponents and try to throw them off their game.
Seattle Seahawks are known for their “12th man”, which is their energetic fan base that will attempt to distract their opponents. The Seahawks’ stadium is also designed to amplify sound.
Denver sits at an elevation of roughly 5400 feet. This can have significant impact on a team used to playing at sea level.
Different baseball fields have different dimensions, so a home run in one stadium isn’t necessarily one in another. The home team is more familiar and practiced with their home field.
If competing internationally, it can be difficult to manage your mental state with time zone differences, travel anxiety, and the hotel experience.
As many have said, familiarity with the field/stadium/area, fatigue for visiting team, etc all play a factor. However, one piece that is often overlooked is the cognitive dissonance the fans put on the officials.
Close call goes against the Home Team? âBooâ âRef you suckâ etc for a few minutes. Close call in favor of the Home team? Hooping and Hollering! Those little calls that might go for the home team over the course of the game can add up to a half point which is quite a bit.
Home field advantage is not as big as many say it is. In College football for example, itâs less than a FG at THE BEST locations. For most itâs a point or so. This is true across multiple sports and even less so in professional sports as those players are constantly traveling, are already at the top of their respective sports, and have been getting cheered and booâd their whole life.
Adding to what others have said, there are also adjustments to the background. On your home field you are accustomed to not looking directly at the bright lights. On a different field those lights may be in a different direction. There are likely to be other visual cues and hazards you are used to using or avoiding, even though you may not give them a lot of thought. You might be used to the way the ceiling of your domed stadium makes the ball harder to see. You may be used to things that look like the ball in the corner of your vision but that arenât the ball.Â
As a kid I always thought in baseball letting the away team bat first was a gentlemanly polite thing that a good host does for its guests. Yes, I had a naĂŻve mindset. In baseball, the team that bats last in the inning has the advantage, and this advantage is given to the home team.
For instance, the ninth inning can begin with the away team ahead by one run, and the away team can then score another and be at two runs ahead at the middle of the inning. The home team has a chance to answer those two runs, and if they happen score three, the game is over, home team wins – the away team doesnât get a chance to answer. The home team always has the last chance, and they can just end it then and there. This is what allows the âwalk-off-home-run.â
Imagine you have to give a presentation at work or school. Â
A home game you wake up in your own bed, kiss your significant other and do your normal commute to work. Â At work youâve got everything as normal, your desk, your computer, your favorite blue mug and your favorite brand of coffee that the boss supplies at your request. Â You give a presentation to your colleagues who are (almost all) encouraging and cheering you on. Â You give the presentation in the same conference room youâve been going to for years. Â
For the away game you have to spend hours on a bus or plane. Â Wake up at a strange hotel without your family. Â You take an unfamiliar route to a strange business in a shared cab rather than your car. Â Inside, the conference room and facilities are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Â Instead of that gourmet coffee your boss stocks you get instant Folgers in a paper cup. Â Instead of your supportive colleagues, youâre doing the presentation to 50,000 angry employees of a competitor who yell and scream at you during the most important parts of the presentation, jeer at you when you make a mistake, and hurl the occasional racial epithet your way. Â And after the presentation is over, whether you do good or bad, youâve gotta get back on that uncomfortable bus and or plane. Â
Its the massive morale boost of being somewhere familiar. Put yourself in the shoes of a baseball player for a moment:
If you play a game at home, you can sleep in your own bed in the days leading up to the game, with your partner if you have one. You can eat homemade meals or meals from places you know and love. You get to practice at a place you’re familiar with you. You know to avoid the restroom under the western seats. You know that weird stain in your dugout is from when Johnny Jazz dropped a tray of a dozen hotdogs. On the day of the game your friends can come watch, and win or lose, you’re going out drinking with them at that place downtime you really like. Things like this add up a lot to put you in a better mood for the game. Better mood means better performance.
Now an away game: you’ve been on a bus for two days leading up to the game. You’re staying in some hotel room, eating whatever sounds good on the takeout menu, and living out of a suitcase. You’re not familiar with the park you’re warming up in and will be playing in, and all of those idiosyncrasies at home are just off-putting; what’s that weird stain in the dugout? Are the hotdogs here any good? Ew, the bathroom makes an awful gurgling sound and leaks on the floor when you flush. And win or lose, you’re back on the bus for another two days.
Travel can be an absolute bear. Most major sports leagues organize their teams into geographical subdivisions to minimize this travel burden.
The one event in the U.S. where the effects are most pronounced and can be noticed more easily is the NCAA Basketball tournament in March. 64 whole teams, who never intended to play each other, get matched up based on their records and not at all by geography.
This means sometimes teams from the west coast have to travel all the way to the east coast for a game, where everything is now happening 3 hours later than their accustomed local time. Often that’s no big deal.
BUT it also means sometimes teams from the east coast have to travel all the way west where things are now happening 3 hours EARLIER than they are accustomed. Imagine you get up for work at 7 everyday but today someone woke you up at 4 A.M.
Teams that have to travel from east to west are more likely to lose the farther west they have to go.
You ever go on a long trip and feel exhausted or stressed? It can be from the hotel, the journey itself, and just being in an unfamiliar place. Same thing with sports. Additionally thereâs a lot more fans of the local team showing up so if thereâs more people rooting for the opposing team/rooting against your team it can have an effect.
Was working with a scrap metal company cutting up old equipment at an open pit coal mine near here and they were using a scissor attachment on an excavator to help break up cuts that didn’t go all the way through and a piece of metal shot through the can through the guys leg out the back of the cab lodged in the engine. They were doing this beside our utility trailer that was holding 16 big bottles of acetylene and oxygen. One of the guys said good thing it went the way it did of it hit those tanks we would end up creating the world’s largest open pit coal mine from the explosion alone. I quit right there and rode home in the ambulance with the injured guy and never looked back.
You play better at a place you’re familiar with where everyone is cheering for you than you do at a place you’re unfamiliar with where everyone is booing you.
Homefield advantage: your routine, your commute to work, your home and bed where you sleep the night before, your time zone, your locker room, your field and stadium and locker room with all its familiarities and team colors making you feel welcome, etc.
All of that is much, much easier and comforting than having to travel to another city, another timezone, sleep in a hotel, etc etc.
But you also have crowd and fan dynamics which can impact the game. In American Football, the game is played in discrete “plays” with starts and finishes to each “down”. There are rules for how a team can begin that play, and if they mess up, they get a penalty. They usually do lots of verbal calls to set this up. A loud crowd can actually make doing this harder, create confusion, which sometimes causes penalties.
In other sports it may be less dramatic, but you still have crowd energy playing into the home team. Loud cheers after scores energizes and boosts morale of the team, and a very loud crowd typically helps the team playing defense, as an offense (just like American football) often uses more complicated communication to create plays, and the defense just has to exploit a mistake, so loudness can energize the defensive team while also causing disruption and confusion for an offense, such as in Basketball.
One I haven’t seen mentioned yet is in hockey you get to start on your own benches side of the ice for 2 of 3 periods. Starting on your benches side makes line changes easier which is a huge huge part of hockey as shifts are very short.
Players don’t play at 100% on every play. Anyone who even tries to do that may find they suffer an injury that puts them on the sidelines.
However, when the game is being played on the home-town field, players will play at a slightly higher level and they will do that more often than usual.
Imagine someone in middle school wanted to beat you up. Do you think you have better chances of winning the fight if it took place at his/her house with only his/her friends there to cheer him/her on or do you have better chances if you chose the location and only your friends were there to cheer you on?
In addition to everything else that people are saying, you get to sleep in your own bed and drive to work, instead of staying in a hotel, and potentially not getting a good nights sleep, and having to eat takeout
Players like Kobe know the exact bounce and grip of the floor in almost the whole court at home.So this applies to where you practice the most and where you familiarize yourself most.
Aside from the familiarity, there is usually a benefit from not having to spend time travelling, and getting to rest at home. All of your teams facilities are available for use when you aren’t on the road.
It’s not supposed to be a HUGE advantage, as the better team usually still wins. It IS a slight advantage because the crowd will cheer for the home team and boo the opposing team. The home team crowd will make noise when the visiting team wants to communicate. The home team also doesn’t have to travel so there’s no jet lag or bus lag or any of that. The home team sleeps where they are familiar with, while the visiting team sleeps in a hotel of some sort. There’s also some psychological factors ( visiting team’s logo and colors in your locker room for instance ) but in most cases, the better team usually should be able to win.
I can’t find it at the moment, but I saw a great study around ten years back that showed that home teams got preferential treatment from referees/umpires at a statistically significant rate.
The other factor is rest. Increasingly evidence shows pro athletes get substantial benefits from proper rest, both on and off the field. So the home team players not having to travel, sleeping in their own beds instead of a hotel, etc. are going to have a positive impact.
Imagine pooping at home, the environment is familiar, you’re comfortable, you poo with ease.
Now imagine pooping at a friends house, what if you clog the toilet? What if the splash tickles your balls? You’re not sure what to expect, you’re more wary. You poop less easily.
In baseball, home team bats second, which is a huge advantage in extra innings. And before the universal DH, whether or not there was a DH in inter-league games was decided by who the home team was. Plus each stadium has different spacing in the outfield and foul ground, which gives an advantage to the home teamâs players who are used to it and know how balls bounce off the wall.
In football, the home crowd knows to be really loud when the visiting team is on offense in order to make it harder for the offensive line to hear their QB
Do you sleep better in your own bed, or in a hotel bed?
You get used to and adapt to your own setup. It feels comfortable, safe, natural.
A hotel bed could be great and give you a refreshing change. It could be awful. The point is, itâs unfamiliar and youâre never going to be as used to it as you are your own bed.
Depends on the sport. In baseball you bat last so you know how many runs you need to tie or win and you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
Some sports like hockey the advantage is more subtle but still significant. As the home team, You are allowed the last line change after a stoppage of play so you can see who the other team puts out there and deploy your players accordingly.
Itâs the umpiring. In sports that have close, low scoring points systems, the home ground advantage is bigger. In high scoring games where the umpire has less impact on outcome, thereâs no advantage
No traveling, you get to rest at your own home in your own bed, less likely to contract illness when your not flying, more comfortable and familiar with practice facilities and the actual arena, support from home crowds, and no need to adjust to the climate which can definitely matter if youâre playing someone super cold or hot.
Like one comment said it’s mostly psychological, having the crowd cheer for your team rather than rooting against you is inspirational and encourages the team to play better. That being said, in American football, crowd noise does have a direct impact on the game. There’s a reason that fans get loud when the away team is on offense, it makes it difficult to communicate if they need to call an audible and change the play on the fly, and there have been a ton of instances of offensive players committing false start penalties (moving before the ball is snapped, but it’s allowed in certain situations, American football has a million tiny rules) because they can’t hear the quarterback’s cadence to snap the ball and start the play.
When my kid plays hockey tournaments at home several things come into play.
He sleeps in his bed
He eats at familiar places
Has family in the crowd
Knows exactly where to go (in terms of the rinks)
When you play on the road there is a lot of weight involved. New city, don’t know where anything is, sleeping in a hotel. It isn’t familiar and comfortable. This adds a bit of stress, not a lot but it does.
The locker room can make a big deal. Your own locker room vs the junk that you get dealt as the visitors. Then there is the travel. Hopefully no jet lag. Also thereâs sleeping in a hotel with loud neighbors vs being at home with the wife and family. It hits differently. And when you need to be at your peak anything can knock you a little off course.
Itâs mostly a mental advantage. Itâs your home venue where youâve played a half your total games, with your home crowd cheering you on and booing your opponent. You sleep at your house in your bed, not in a hotel room.
But there are also unseen factors that contribute to that mental game. Usually the home locker room is super nice and you have access to all your equipment, a full repair shop, medical facilities, gym, etc. Typically the visiting facilities are not as put together – folding chairs, living out of road cases, etc.
There may be advantages to the features of the stadium. Perhaps you know to wear sunglasses to filter the glare on the windows on the luxury boxes. Certain NHL stadiums have the backup goalie sitting in the service tunnel, not on the visiting players bench with the rest of the team.
There may even be rules that provide an advantage, however small – in the NHL, the visitors must put their players on the ice first, then the home team puts their best matchup on the ice. In MLB, the home team bats last, and therefore wins the game without having to bat the 9th inning if they lead, or only has to score one more than the visitor in the bottom of the 9th inning.
You have a playdate with your friend but they live 2 hours away. Your parents drive you over there and you start getting sleepy on the long drive. Right when you start falling asleep you arrive at your friendâs house and youâre tired from the car ride.
You start playing with your friend but you donât like his toys as much, his parents are annoying, they have a beat up couch, crappy TV, and your friend makes you use a cheap 3rd party Madcatz controller while playing Xbox. Then before you know it is time to go home and you have to spend another two hours in your parentâs car.
In baseball different fields have different dimensions. Those with a shorter outfield plan for long hitters on their roster, where home runs on the home field would be long outs on the road.
You’re playing on a field you are used to. Whether it’s grass or turf in football, or the lengths of the walls in baseball. It’s familiar.
Your fans are there. They are quiet for the crucial moments, but loud to get you going to rally for a big play. They can be the difference between motivation and deflation
You have more rest compared to the visiting team, very important for athletes. Also the crowd is on your side so there is a psychological factor involved, not every athlete performs well in front of a hostile crowd.
In rare cases it could be a geographic advantage. Take sports teams based in Denver for example. Denver has a notoriously high altitude which can cause lightheadedness in people who are not used to living in such a high place. Visiting teams sometimes don’t perform as well compared to the home team who actually spend most of their time there and are accustomed to the living conditions.
Imagine you need to do a specific mental task for money.
You can do it in familiar surroundings where you know where everything is – such as coffee machines, mugs, comfortable chairs etc – and every person surrounding you is encouraging you, gives you time to prepare yourself and wants to see you succeed.
Or, you could do the mental task in unfamiliar surroundings that youâve had to travel a long way to get to – where you donât know where to get a nice drink, all of the nice seats are taken and everyone surrounding you is shouting insults, jostling you and laughing when you make a mistake. Thatâs mental task suddenly becomes a lot harder.
In football ( soccer ) the size of the pitch can vary as long as long as its within a certain range. Thus the home team will play to a certain style to take advantage of the pitch size
I suspect itâs more meaningful in North American sports than elsewhere. For the major team sports in the UK such as football, rugby, and cricket, playing at home is more of advantage in terms of familiarity and psychology than anything else. For example, playing areas can be different dimensions, or may be on a slope; or the facilities at the stadium may be different; and of course the home team wonât have so far to travel. Plus the partisan atmosphere may have an effect on some of the players.
Significant issues like choosing which way you play, who kicks off, who bats first are decided by the toss of a coin, however.
its simple, the home team did not have to travel (its often a significant trip, and it also forces the away team to skip a day of training right before the game) and so their players are thus by default more fresh.
Time zone,
Comfort of sleeping/preparing the previous few nights in your home town/training base,
Minimum travel before the game,
Majority of the stadium support on your side,
Familiarity with ground/stadium conditions & infrastructure
A good example would be the Metrodome in Minneapolis. It’s gone now, but when it was there, it was also called the Thunderdome. The reason was because it was definingly loud. 130 decibels at the 50 yard line when the crowd was at capacity.
When you’d go see a game, when the Vikings were on defense, the Vikes could signal the crowd to make noise. Now the crowd is part of the game. The opposing team couldn’t call an audible, they had to go to a silent count, they’re confused, they can’t hear anything, and then “Tweet” from the ref. Delay of game. Then the crowd gets louder. “Tweet” Delay of game. Then complete confusion and the QB gets sacked.
Then the Vikings offense takes the field. The crowd goes silent for them.
When you watched a game at the Metrodome, you were a part of the game yourself.
Physical aspect of home field advantage, Penn State Mo Bamba. Home crowd was so loud that Michigan couldn’t even get the ball snapped on the first play of the game and had to waste a time out. I believe the same thing happened to SMU this last year, they couldn’t hear in helmet comms play calling over the crowdÂ
From my lacrosse days, other teams used different fields to us. Some were minor like the soil being harder or softer, some used 3G fake grass which bounced balls differently, and the worst type was just a hard ground with green lining. We only trained on 3G and real grass so those hard pitches threw us all off and did lead to some losses since the other team was quite used to using bounce shots.
Having to travel sucked too if you had to get back the same day and not all coach drivers were chill with us drinking after matches (understandable).
While there have been many good answers one I have not seen is sex. I know this sounds stupid, but the home team have regular sexual partners and until about a decade or so the away team would go out to clubs the night before a game to get laid. This usually involved a lot of drinking and staying up late which meant visiting players could show up to a game underslept and hung over. Home court advantage went down measurably in basketball between 2012 and 2016 as tinder rose in popularity, and reports from players indicated that they were using tinder for hookups instead of clubbing the night before games. I am sure this is true in other games as well, I just haven’t seen the precise data.Â
Fans cheering for you, against opponents. That feels good, boosts effort.
Familiar on-field/court environment — you know the topography of the field, dead spots in the court, how the lights might affect you if you look up, etc.
Familiar routine — how to enter and where to go, where you locker is, where the bathroom and showers are, etc. you can be on autopilot pre-game because they’re your facilities.
Sleep in own bed, get ready at home, not worrying about packing for trip home after the game
I believe it comes down to practice and effective leadership- its much more difficult to practice for, and takes a certain kind of wisdom to maintain cohesion or adherence to fundamental skills in hostile/unfamiliar/high-pressure environments.
It has more power over some than others, both on the individual and team levels. For some, knowing that most of the eyes on them are rooting against them can have a negative effect on performance, while it is positive for others. For some, unfamiliar facilities, climate, referees/judges, etc. can have a negative impact on concentration and/or morale, while giving competitive energy to others. The exact effect is almost entirely unpredictable, but herein lies the problem: uncertainty. It is hard to plan for or react to something so hazy, and the anxiety over this itself can lead to changes in outcomes at any level.
Comments
It’s largely psychological. You’re more used to where you practice and so you don’t need to transpose those skills into a new environment. It’s just the same field you always use. Then there’s the benefit of having fans that will cheer you on instead of heckling you and calling you names. Positive reinforcement goes a long way even if you’re trained to tune most of the noise out.
Edit: people made some decent points, especially as it pertains to non-standard field arrangements as seen in Baseball, so I’ve changed “entirely” to “largely”
It’s the exact place they practice, so they’re already comfortable and know what to expect. Someone else’s field isn’t the same so wouldn’t be as familiar
Other than psychological benefits, In sports such as American football, crown noise can easily ruin opponents plays and cause false starts. There are a few tangible benefits, but mostly just mental benefits
In baseball it gives you the chance to bat last. You can adjust as necessary. In hockey you make the last line change so you dictate the matchups. In đ the crowd can sometimes disrupt play calling.
You sleep at home. The visiting team has to get on a plane and travel and sleep at a hotel and eat out. You are in your own time zone.
Your home field has a patch of grass that’s thicker than the rest on that one corner so the ball behaves weird there. Or you you’ll run different through it. Your home field has a slope to it that’s not quite even so it’s easier to kick the ball from one side of the field than the other. Your home field has a rocky area there just right of center, if you can get an opponent to fall there they’ll get hurt worse than other places.
Basically you’ve played on your home field enough that you’re very aware of its quirks. When you go to a different field, you know none of this but your opponent does.
In baseball it may matter more because ballparks are all different dimensions. So that if you have a short right-field porch, you may load your lineup full of left-handed hitters and your bullpen up with right-handed pitchers. Additionally if you have a pitching staff that likes to pitch to contact you might find the groundskeeper cuts the grass just a little bit longer so that ground balls roll slower.
When the referee or official is encircled by tens of thousands of screaming adult homo sapiens their lizard brain subconsciously makes decisions in favor of the competitor that the potentially violent mob overwhelmingly supports.
It depends on the sport. The crowd can warn the home team player of the location of an opposition player that the first player hasn’t spotted. They can make a lot of noise when the opposition are trying to communicate instructions. Sometimes the actual field is significantly different and playing on it regularly helps to understand what will happen on it during a match. Then there is a psychological effect of not wanting to let your fans down and they may cheer to pick you up or even boo if you perform badly.
Imagine doing your day job in your office youâre used to.
Imagine doing the same job one day but youâre randomly in someone elseâs office surrounded by strangers. In this office you had a much bigger commute and the colleagues donât want you to succeed and heckle you, etc.
Data demonstrate that home field advantage exists but the effects of it vary by era, sport, season length, geography, officiating, etc. I don’t think there are definitive data that universally shows WHY home field advantage exists.
Here are some concrete examples for clarity.
As many have said, familiarity with the field/stadium/area, fatigue for visiting team, etc all play a factor. However, one piece that is often overlooked is the cognitive dissonance the fans put on the officials.
Close call goes against the Home Team? âBooâ âRef you suckâ etc for a few minutes. Close call in favor of the Home team? Hooping and Hollering! Those little calls that might go for the home team over the course of the game can add up to a half point which is quite a bit.
Home field advantage is not as big as many say it is. In College football for example, itâs less than a FG at THE BEST locations. For most itâs a point or so. This is true across multiple sports and even less so in professional sports as those players are constantly traveling, are already at the top of their respective sports, and have been getting cheered and booâd their whole life.
Adding to what others have said, there are also adjustments to the background. On your home field you are accustomed to not looking directly at the bright lights. On a different field those lights may be in a different direction. There are likely to be other visual cues and hazards you are used to using or avoiding, even though you may not give them a lot of thought. You might be used to the way the ceiling of your domed stadium makes the ball harder to see. You may be used to things that look like the ball in the corner of your vision but that arenât the ball.Â
As a kid I always thought in baseball letting the away team bat first was a gentlemanly polite thing that a good host does for its guests. Yes, I had a naĂŻve mindset. In baseball, the team that bats last in the inning has the advantage, and this advantage is given to the home team.
For instance, the ninth inning can begin with the away team ahead by one run, and the away team can then score another and be at two runs ahead at the middle of the inning. The home team has a chance to answer those two runs, and if they happen score three, the game is over, home team wins – the away team doesnât get a chance to answer. The home team always has the last chance, and they can just end it then and there. This is what allows the âwalk-off-home-run.â
Imagine you have to give a presentation at work or school. Â
A home game you wake up in your own bed, kiss your significant other and do your normal commute to work. Â At work youâve got everything as normal, your desk, your computer, your favorite blue mug and your favorite brand of coffee that the boss supplies at your request. Â You give a presentation to your colleagues who are (almost all) encouraging and cheering you on. Â You give the presentation in the same conference room youâve been going to for years. Â
For the away game you have to spend hours on a bus or plane. Â Wake up at a strange hotel without your family. Â You take an unfamiliar route to a strange business in a shared cab rather than your car. Â Inside, the conference room and facilities are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Â Instead of that gourmet coffee your boss stocks you get instant Folgers in a paper cup. Â Instead of your supportive colleagues, youâre doing the presentation to 50,000 angry employees of a competitor who yell and scream at you during the most important parts of the presentation, jeer at you when you make a mistake, and hurl the occasional racial epithet your way. Â And after the presentation is over, whether you do good or bad, youâve gotta get back on that uncomfortable bus and or plane. Â
Its the massive morale boost of being somewhere familiar. Put yourself in the shoes of a baseball player for a moment:
If you play a game at home, you can sleep in your own bed in the days leading up to the game, with your partner if you have one. You can eat homemade meals or meals from places you know and love. You get to practice at a place you’re familiar with you. You know to avoid the restroom under the western seats. You know that weird stain in your dugout is from when Johnny Jazz dropped a tray of a dozen hotdogs. On the day of the game your friends can come watch, and win or lose, you’re going out drinking with them at that place downtime you really like. Things like this add up a lot to put you in a better mood for the game. Better mood means better performance.
Now an away game: you’ve been on a bus for two days leading up to the game. You’re staying in some hotel room, eating whatever sounds good on the takeout menu, and living out of a suitcase. You’re not familiar with the park you’re warming up in and will be playing in, and all of those idiosyncrasies at home are just off-putting; what’s that weird stain in the dugout? Are the hotdogs here any good? Ew, the bathroom makes an awful gurgling sound and leaks on the floor when you flush. And win or lose, you’re back on the bus for another two days.
Travel can be an absolute bear. Most major sports leagues organize their teams into geographical subdivisions to minimize this travel burden.
The one event in the U.S. where the effects are most pronounced and can be noticed more easily is the NCAA Basketball tournament in March. 64 whole teams, who never intended to play each other, get matched up based on their records and not at all by geography.
This means sometimes teams from the west coast have to travel all the way to the east coast for a game, where everything is now happening 3 hours later than their accustomed local time. Often that’s no big deal.
BUT it also means sometimes teams from the east coast have to travel all the way west where things are now happening 3 hours EARLIER than they are accustomed. Imagine you get up for work at 7 everyday but today someone woke you up at 4 A.M.
Teams that have to travel from east to west are more likely to lose the farther west they have to go.
You ever go on a long trip and feel exhausted or stressed? It can be from the hotel, the journey itself, and just being in an unfamiliar place. Same thing with sports. Additionally thereâs a lot more fans of the local team showing up so if thereâs more people rooting for the opposing team/rooting against your team it can have an effect.
Was working with a scrap metal company cutting up old equipment at an open pit coal mine near here and they were using a scissor attachment on an excavator to help break up cuts that didn’t go all the way through and a piece of metal shot through the can through the guys leg out the back of the cab lodged in the engine. They were doing this beside our utility trailer that was holding 16 big bottles of acetylene and oxygen. One of the guys said good thing it went the way it did of it hit those tanks we would end up creating the world’s largest open pit coal mine from the explosion alone. I quit right there and rode home in the ambulance with the injured guy and never looked back.
You play better at a place you’re familiar with where everyone is cheering for you than you do at a place you’re unfamiliar with where everyone is booing you.
Homefield advantage: your routine, your commute to work, your home and bed where you sleep the night before, your time zone, your locker room, your field and stadium and locker room with all its familiarities and team colors making you feel welcome, etc.
All of that is much, much easier and comforting than having to travel to another city, another timezone, sleep in a hotel, etc etc.
But you also have crowd and fan dynamics which can impact the game. In American Football, the game is played in discrete “plays” with starts and finishes to each “down”. There are rules for how a team can begin that play, and if they mess up, they get a penalty. They usually do lots of verbal calls to set this up. A loud crowd can actually make doing this harder, create confusion, which sometimes causes penalties.
In other sports it may be less dramatic, but you still have crowd energy playing into the home team. Loud cheers after scores energizes and boosts morale of the team, and a very loud crowd typically helps the team playing defense, as an offense (just like American football) often uses more complicated communication to create plays, and the defense just has to exploit a mistake, so loudness can energize the defensive team while also causing disruption and confusion for an offense, such as in Basketball.
There are different factors in every sport.
One I haven’t seen mentioned yet is in hockey you get to start on your own benches side of the ice for 2 of 3 periods. Starting on your benches side makes line changes easier which is a huge huge part of hockey as shifts are very short.
I can walk through my house with my eyes closed, could you?
Players don’t play at 100% on every play. Anyone who even tries to do that may find they suffer an injury that puts them on the sidelines.
However, when the game is being played on the home-town field, players will play at a slightly higher level and they will do that more often than usual.
It’s all mental.
Imagine it like you challenged someone to a Super Smash Bros 1v1.
You’d probably do better playing at home, using your controllers, than you would be at their place using their controllers.
You ever go to a friendâs house and try to use their tv?
Imagine someone in middle school wanted to beat you up. Do you think you have better chances of winning the fight if it took place at his/her house with only his/her friends there to cheer him/her on or do you have better chances if you chose the location and only your friends were there to cheer you on?
In addition to everything else that people are saying, you get to sleep in your own bed and drive to work, instead of staying in a hotel, and potentially not getting a good nights sleep, and having to eat takeout
There’s a whole episode of King of the Hill about this. Hank fixing the field.
Players like Kobe know the exact bounce and grip of the floor in almost the whole court at home.So this applies to where you practice the most and where you familiarize yourself most.
Aside from the familiarity, there is usually a benefit from not having to spend time travelling, and getting to rest at home. All of your teams facilities are available for use when you aren’t on the road.
It’s not supposed to be a HUGE advantage, as the better team usually still wins. It IS a slight advantage because the crowd will cheer for the home team and boo the opposing team. The home team crowd will make noise when the visiting team wants to communicate. The home team also doesn’t have to travel so there’s no jet lag or bus lag or any of that. The home team sleeps where they are familiar with, while the visiting team sleeps in a hotel of some sort. There’s also some psychological factors ( visiting team’s logo and colors in your locker room for instance ) but in most cases, the better team usually should be able to win.
I can’t find it at the moment, but I saw a great study around ten years back that showed that home teams got preferential treatment from referees/umpires at a statistically significant rate.
The other factor is rest. Increasingly evidence shows pro athletes get substantial benefits from proper rest, both on and off the field. So the home team players not having to travel, sleeping in their own beds instead of a hotel, etc. are going to have a positive impact.
Imagine pooping at home, the environment is familiar, you’re comfortable, you poo with ease.
Now imagine pooping at a friends house, what if you clog the toilet? What if the splash tickles your balls? You’re not sure what to expect, you’re more wary. You poop less easily.
Depends on the sport.
In baseball, home team bats second, which is a huge advantage in extra innings. And before the universal DH, whether or not there was a DH in inter-league games was decided by who the home team was. Plus each stadium has different spacing in the outfield and foul ground, which gives an advantage to the home teamâs players who are used to it and know how balls bounce off the wall.
In football, the home crowd knows to be really loud when the visiting team is on offense in order to make it harder for the offensive line to hear their QB
Do you sleep better in your own bed, or in a hotel bed?
You get used to and adapt to your own setup. It feels comfortable, safe, natural.
A hotel bed could be great and give you a refreshing change. It could be awful. The point is, itâs unfamiliar and youâre never going to be as used to it as you are your own bed.
Depends on the sport. In baseball you bat last so you know how many runs you need to tie or win and you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
Some sports like hockey the advantage is more subtle but still significant. As the home team, You are allowed the last line change after a stoppage of play so you can see who the other team puts out there and deploy your players accordingly.
You know how sometimes you can’t poop in bathroom that isn’t your own? Extrapolate.
Itâs the umpiring. In sports that have close, low scoring points systems, the home ground advantage is bigger. In high scoring games where the umpire has less impact on outcome, thereâs no advantage
No traveling, you get to rest at your own home in your own bed, less likely to contract illness when your not flying, more comfortable and familiar with practice facilities and the actual arena, support from home crowds, and no need to adjust to the climate which can definitely matter if youâre playing someone super cold or hot.
Like one comment said it’s mostly psychological, having the crowd cheer for your team rather than rooting against you is inspirational and encourages the team to play better. That being said, in American football, crowd noise does have a direct impact on the game. There’s a reason that fans get loud when the away team is on offense, it makes it difficult to communicate if they need to call an audible and change the play on the fly, and there have been a ton of instances of offensive players committing false start penalties (moving before the ball is snapped, but it’s allowed in certain situations, American football has a million tiny rules) because they can’t hear the quarterback’s cadence to snap the ball and start the play.
You know how you go on vacation, and that first poop in your bathroom is just awesome? Thatâs home field advantage.
The crowd impact on refereeing decisions is significant in many sports.
Home, plain and simple.
When my kid plays hockey tournaments at home several things come into play.
He sleeps in his bed
He eats at familiar places
Has family in the crowd
Knows exactly where to go (in terms of the rinks)
When you play on the road there is a lot of weight involved. New city, don’t know where anything is, sleeping in a hotel. It isn’t familiar and comfortable. This adds a bit of stress, not a lot but it does.
Mostly gonna affect your less confident guys or nonstars. Crowd gets some extra motivational energy for guys who can feed off that.
The locker room can make a big deal. Your own locker room vs the junk that you get dealt as the visitors. Then there is the travel. Hopefully no jet lag. Also thereâs sleeping in a hotel with loud neighbors vs being at home with the wife and family. It hits differently. And when you need to be at your peak anything can knock you a little off course.
Itâs mostly a mental advantage. Itâs your home venue where youâve played a half your total games, with your home crowd cheering you on and booing your opponent. You sleep at your house in your bed, not in a hotel room.
But there are also unseen factors that contribute to that mental game. Usually the home locker room is super nice and you have access to all your equipment, a full repair shop, medical facilities, gym, etc. Typically the visiting facilities are not as put together – folding chairs, living out of road cases, etc.
There may be advantages to the features of the stadium. Perhaps you know to wear sunglasses to filter the glare on the windows on the luxury boxes. Certain NHL stadiums have the backup goalie sitting in the service tunnel, not on the visiting players bench with the rest of the team.
There may even be rules that provide an advantage, however small – in the NHL, the visitors must put their players on the ice first, then the home team puts their best matchup on the ice. In MLB, the home team bats last, and therefore wins the game without having to bat the 9th inning if they lead, or only has to score one more than the visitor in the bottom of the 9th inning.
You have a playdate with your friend but they live 2 hours away. Your parents drive you over there and you start getting sleepy on the long drive. Right when you start falling asleep you arrive at your friendâs house and youâre tired from the car ride.
You start playing with your friend but you donât like his toys as much, his parents are annoying, they have a beat up couch, crappy TV, and your friend makes you use a cheap 3rd party Madcatz controller while playing Xbox. Then before you know it is time to go home and you have to spend another two hours in your parentâs car.
Have you ever cooked in someone elseâs kitchen?
Do you like sleeping in your own bed and having your daily routine? Do you think not having those things could be disruptive?
What about knowing your home turf and having everyone you interact with excited to see you. Thatâs a bit of it.
In baseball different fields have different dimensions. Those with a shorter outfield plan for long hitters on their roster, where home runs on the home field would be long outs on the road.
You’re playing on a field you are used to. Whether it’s grass or turf in football, or the lengths of the walls in baseball. It’s familiar.
Your fans are there. They are quiet for the crucial moments, but loud to get you going to rally for a big play. They can be the difference between motivation and deflation
You have more rest compared to the visiting team, very important for athletes. Also the crowd is on your side so there is a psychological factor involved, not every athlete performs well in front of a hostile crowd.
In rare cases it could be a geographic advantage. Take sports teams based in Denver for example. Denver has a notoriously high altitude which can cause lightheadedness in people who are not used to living in such a high place. Visiting teams sometimes don’t perform as well compared to the home team who actually spend most of their time there and are accustomed to the living conditions.
Being in an environment where everyone wants you to succeed is easier to perform well than if everyone wants you to fail.
Hey OP. This is how I imagine it:
Imagine you need to do a specific mental task for money.
You can do it in familiar surroundings where you know where everything is – such as coffee machines, mugs, comfortable chairs etc – and every person surrounding you is encouraging you, gives you time to prepare yourself and wants to see you succeed.
Or, you could do the mental task in unfamiliar surroundings that youâve had to travel a long way to get to – where you donât know where to get a nice drink, all of the nice seats are taken and everyone surrounding you is shouting insults, jostling you and laughing when you make a mistake. Thatâs mental task suddenly becomes a lot harder.
Thatâs how I see home field advantage.
In football ( soccer ) the size of the pitch can vary as long as long as its within a certain range. Thus the home team will play to a certain style to take advantage of the pitch size
I suspect itâs more meaningful in North American sports than elsewhere. For the major team sports in the UK such as football, rugby, and cricket, playing at home is more of advantage in terms of familiarity and psychology than anything else. For example, playing areas can be different dimensions, or may be on a slope; or the facilities at the stadium may be different; and of course the home team wonât have so far to travel. Plus the partisan atmosphere may have an effect on some of the players.
Significant issues like choosing which way you play, who kicks off, who bats first are decided by the toss of a coin, however.
its simple, the home team did not have to travel (its often a significant trip, and it also forces the away team to skip a day of training right before the game) and so their players are thus by default more fresh.
Time zone,
Comfort of sleeping/preparing the previous few nights in your home town/training base,
Minimum travel before the game,
Majority of the stadium support on your side,
Familiarity with ground/stadium conditions & infrastructure
A good example would be the Metrodome in Minneapolis. It’s gone now, but when it was there, it was also called the Thunderdome. The reason was because it was definingly loud. 130 decibels at the 50 yard line when the crowd was at capacity.
When you’d go see a game, when the Vikings were on defense, the Vikes could signal the crowd to make noise. Now the crowd is part of the game. The opposing team couldn’t call an audible, they had to go to a silent count, they’re confused, they can’t hear anything, and then “Tweet” from the ref. Delay of game. Then the crowd gets louder. “Tweet” Delay of game. Then complete confusion and the QB gets sacked.
Then the Vikings offense takes the field. The crowd goes silent for them.
When you watched a game at the Metrodome, you were a part of the game yourself.
Physical aspect of home field advantage, Penn State Mo Bamba. Home crowd was so loud that Michigan couldn’t even get the ball snapped on the first play of the game and had to waste a time out. I believe the same thing happened to SMU this last year, they couldn’t hear in helmet comms play calling over the crowdÂ
Imagine trying to cook dinner in your kitchen.
Now imagine cooking dinner in someone elseâs kitchen.
If you donât cook this doesnât help at all, but I tried.
From my lacrosse days, other teams used different fields to us. Some were minor like the soil being harder or softer, some used 3G fake grass which bounced balls differently, and the worst type was just a hard ground with green lining. We only trained on 3G and real grass so those hard pitches threw us all off and did lead to some losses since the other team was quite used to using bounce shots.
Having to travel sucked too if you had to get back the same day and not all coach drivers were chill with us drinking after matches (understandable).
While there have been many good answers one I have not seen is sex. I know this sounds stupid, but the home team have regular sexual partners and until about a decade or so the away team would go out to clubs the night before a game to get laid. This usually involved a lot of drinking and staying up late which meant visiting players could show up to a game underslept and hung over. Home court advantage went down measurably in basketball between 2012 and 2016 as tinder rose in popularity, and reports from players indicated that they were using tinder for hookups instead of clubbing the night before games. I am sure this is true in other games as well, I just haven’t seen the precise data.Â
It’s a bunch of little things that all ad up…
Fans cheering for you, against opponents. That feels good, boosts effort.
Familiar on-field/court environment — you know the topography of the field, dead spots in the court, how the lights might affect you if you look up, etc.
Familiar routine — how to enter and where to go, where you locker is, where the bathroom and showers are, etc. you can be on autopilot pre-game because they’re your facilities.
Sleep in own bed, get ready at home, not worrying about packing for trip home after the game
No need for sports here.
Tasks are more difficult to complete in an environment where people don’t like you and are obnoxious about not liking you.
Imagine one parent, (or even two parents!), telling you that you are doing a good job and they are proud of you.
I believe it comes down to practice and effective leadership- its much more difficult to practice for, and takes a certain kind of wisdom to maintain cohesion or adherence to fundamental skills in hostile/unfamiliar/high-pressure environments.
It has more power over some than others, both on the individual and team levels. For some, knowing that most of the eyes on them are rooting against them can have a negative effect on performance, while it is positive for others. For some, unfamiliar facilities, climate, referees/judges, etc. can have a negative impact on concentration and/or morale, while giving competitive energy to others. The exact effect is almost entirely unpredictable, but herein lies the problem: uncertainty. It is hard to plan for or react to something so hazy, and the anxiety over this itself can lead to changes in outcomes at any level.