The present study examines a specific type of referee biases, home bias, and analyzes how
the presence of fans affects home bias by using NBA games played in empty arenas during …

Using COVID-19 safety protocols as a natural experiment, we are able to delineate three
distinct attendance categories in the NBA: 1) unrestricted games played prior to the …

The COVID-19 pandemic provides a natural experimental framework to comprehensively
test the effect of crowds on both referees and players. We examine this from a North …

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on professional sports, notably, forcing the
National Hockey League to hold its 2020 playoffs in empty arenas. This provided an …

This study investigates the impact of restricted crowds caused by the COVID-19 pandemic
on the margin of victory of games in the NBA. Using 12,500 game-level observations from 11 …

We use ghost matches induced by Covid19 in the Bundesliga, Germany's top two football
(soccer) divisions, to investigate whether audiences affect referees. We find that pre …

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, European elite football (aka soccer) leagues played the
remaining season 2019/20 without or strongly limited attendance of supporters (ie,“ghost …

The present paper investigates factors contributing to the home advantage, by using the
exceptional opportunity to study professional football matches played in the absence of …

The home advantage (HA) is a robust phenomenon in football whereby the home team wins
more games and scores more goals than the away team. One explanation is that the home …

Although the home advantage is a well-documented phenomenon in soccer, the effect of the
home crowd social pressure on teams and referees' performance remains unclear. The …