An investigation into the effect of audiences on the soccer penalty kick.

Background: The effects of audiences in boosting the performance of the home team (i.e., home advantage) in sports like soccer have been studied extensively. However, much less attention has been paid to how audiences influence the performance of individual team members.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the effect of audiences on the performance of home and away teams during penalty kicks.

Methods: The current study compared in-game penalty kicks taken by home and away teams in eight major European leagues with audiences in the 2018-2019 season to kicks taken without audiences in the 2020-2021 season during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results and conclusion: The results indicated no unequivocal evidence for home or away team advantage with respect to penalty outcome (i.e., goal, no goal). Yet, results did show that the number of missed penalties of home teams (i.e., penalties kicked at or outside the frame of the goal) significantly reduced when no audience was present. This supports the hypothesis that home audiences increase anxiety of penalty takers and thus the likelihood of choking. However, the reduced number of missed penalties did not significantly increase penalty outcome of home teams when playing without audiences, suggesting additional, unidentified effects of audiences, possibly also including opponent goalkeepers. Finally, when no audience was present, away teams demonstrated significantly poorer penalty outcome. Future research investigating the effects of audiences on the penalty kick should consider more detailed performance measures of both penalty takers and goalkeepers."