Officials and Home Advantage

Abstract

Home advantage is the observed regularity that teams in sporting events win more often than their relative quality would suggest when playing at home. We review the literature and illustrate a number of the potential explanations using a novel and huge dataset of cricket matches. Explanations for the home advantage can be summarised into four headings: crowd, familiarity, travel and rules. Evidence increasingly points towards the role that officials play, yet other explanations cannot necessarily be ruled out.