THE ADVANTAGE OF HOME MATHES IN DIFFERENT PROFESSIONAL LEAGUES IN FOOTBALL

Abstract

In football, more than one factor influences the outcome of a match. It is stated that one of the important factors affecting the outcome of the match is the playing at home advantage. Although home matches advantage in football is an important factor in determining the results of competitions, the exact reasons for this have still not been determined. The application of statistics in football can strategically help a team to get better results. The purpose of this study is to examine the advantage of playing at home (home matches) in different professional leagues in football. The research sample comprised a total of 4264 matches played during the entire season in the top football leagues in Turkey, Spain, France, Germany, Italy and England during the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 seasons. The research data was obtained from the official websites of the relevant Federations of the countries and their frequency and percentage values were calculated and interpreted. According to the results, the average percentage of home advantage in all leagues was 53.80%. Furthermore, the highest percentage of the home side advantage was found to be in the Turkish Super League with 55.99% and the lowest percentage was found to be in the Italian Serie A with 51.80%. Research findings show that being a host has an impact on the outcome of the competitions and the league ranking. It is thought that examining the advantage of home matches in football in terms of different variables will contribute to clarifying the exact causes of this advantage.