Everyone’s always talking about how great home-field advantage is in sports, but how important is it really? The mindless stats everyone repeats about how NFL teams with home-field advantage do better in the playoffs drive me crazy—the teams earned home-field advantage because they’re better already! Also, are home-field advantages different in different sports? —Doc, via e-mail

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  I’m telling you, geniuses have sweated over this stuff. Get a load of the opening from “The Home Advantage,” a landmark study by Barry Schwartz of the University of Chicago and Stephen Barsky of Temple University (Social Forces, 1977): “This study relates to a perspective on group support whose origin is embodied in the work of [pioneering sociologist] Emile Durkheim. While Durkheim is best known for his stress on the inhibiting and restraining character of the moral community, he also [has a lot to say] concerning the stimulating effects of social congregation. . . . For Durkheim . . . the very conditions which regulate man’s passions and conduct are those which inspire and propel him to the most extraordinary levels of achievement.” In case it got by you, “the stimulating effects of social congregation” = home-field advantage, hereinafter referred to as HFA.



 Stats geeks in other sports aren’t as obsessive as MLB’s, but what research there is suggests HFA is common all over. Perusing a comprehensive recent study (“Long-Term Trends in Home Advantage in Professional Team Sports in North America and England [1876-2003],” Pollard and Pollard, 2005), I note as follows: (a) since 1900, notwithstanding some year-to-year swings, MLB home-field winning percentages have been remarkably stable at about .540; (b) the NFL HFA fluctuates a lot, no doubt because fewer games mean more statistical noise, but home-field wins are usually in the 55 to 60 percent range; (c) NHL home-ice wins have declined from 60 percent in the 70s to a pretty steady 55 percent since the mid-90s; (d) NBA home-court wins dropped from 65 percent in the mid-80s to 60 percent in recent years, still the highest among the U.S. sports studied; and (e) HFA shows up in UK sports too.

Update 9/11/2018: A new headline was added.