Home advantage and mispricing in indoor sports' ghost games: the case of European basketball.
Ann Oper Res
; : 1-28, 2022 Sep 28.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-20234647
ABSTRACT
Several recent studies suggest that the home advantage, that is, the benefit competitors accrue from performing in familiar surroundings, was-at least temporarily-reduced in games played without spectators due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. These games played without fans during the Pandemic have been dubbed 'ghost games'. However, the majority of the research to date focus on soccer and no contributions have been provided for indoor sports, where the effect of the support of the fans might have a stronger impact than in outdoor arenas. In this paper, we try to fill this gap by investigating the effect of ghost games in basketball with a special focus on the possible reduction of the home advantage due to the absence of spectators inside the arena. In particular, we test (i) for the reduction of the home advantage in basketball, (ii) whether such reduction tends to disappear over time, (iii) if the bookmakers promptly adapt to such structural change or whether mispricing was created on the betting market. The results from a large data set covering all seasons since 2004 for the ten most popular and followed basketball leagues in Europe show, on the one hand, an overall significant reduction of the home advantage of around 5% and no evidence that suggests that this effect has been reduced at as teams became more accustomed to playing without fans; on the other hand, bookmakers appear to have anticipated such effect and priced home win in basketball matches accordingly, thus avoiding creating mispricing on betting markets.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Language:
English
Journal:
Ann Oper Res
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S10479-022-04950-7
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