No crowd, no roar, no home advantage: evidence from ice hockey

Research question The COVID-19 pandemic entailed a period where no spectators were allowed to attend arena events. This provided a unique opportunity to study how the non-presence of supportive home crowds affects home advantage in sports. In this paper, we examine if there is such a home advantage for ice hockey. Research methods Using data from four consecutive seasons of Norwegian ice hockey, we apply team-fixed and referee-fixed effects regression analysis to identify how the non-presence of home crowds affects two aspects of home advantage in ice hockey: goal scoring and number of suspensions. Results When matches are played in front of no home crowd, away teams score more goals to reduce the initial goal scoring difference in favor of home teams. When playing in front of no home crowd, home teams also get more suspensions causing more power plays for away teams to reduce the initial difference in number of suspensions favoring home teams. Finally, more suspensions for home teams are positively correlated with goal scoring for away teams. This suggests that the absence of home crowds also influences goal scoring indirectly for away teams, i.e. through more suspensions for home teams. Implications When two teams of equal performance-ability meet up, hockey team owners, coaches, people betting on hockey matches, and fans/spectators could all benefit from knowing that a roaring home crowd might be the critical issue that tips the scale in the home team’s favor.