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Team performance and the perception of being observed: Experimental evidence from top-level professional football

  • Massimiliano Ferraresi ORCID logo EMAIL logo and Gianluca Gucciardi ORCID logo
Published/Copyright: October 21, 2022

Abstract

We exploit the natural experimental setting provided by the Covid-19 lockdown to analyse how performance is affected by a friendly audience. Specifically, we use data on all football matches in the top-level competitions across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom over the 2019/2020 season. We compare the difference between the number of points gained by teams playing at home and teams competing away before the Covid-19 outbreak, when supporters could attend any match, with the same difference after the lockdown, when all matches took place behind closed doors. We find that the performance of the home team is halved when stadiums are empty. Further analyses indicate that offensive (defensive) actions taken by the home team are drastically reduced (increased) once games are played behind closed doors. Referees are affected too, as they change their behaviour in games without spectators. Finally, the home advantage is entirely driven by teams that do not have international experience. Taken together, our findings corroborate the hypothesis that social pressure influences individual behaviour.

JEL Classification: J2; D8; M54

Article note

We would like to thank the editor, Peter Egger, and two anonymous referees for suggestions that improved the paper significantly. The scientific output expressed does not imply a policy position of the European Investment Bank nor Unicredit. Neither the European Investment Bank and Unicredit nor any person acting on behalf of them is responsible for the use which might be made of this publication.


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Supplemental Material

The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/ger-2021-0104).


Published Online: 2022-10-21
Published in Print: 2023-02-28

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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