Do Fans Impact Sports Outcomes? A COVID-19 Natural Experiment∗

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of fan attendance on home field advantage in top European soccer leagues. We exploit exogenous variation in the level of fan attendance driven by COVID-19 mitigation policies and find that the home field advantage, as measured by home minus away (expected) goals, is reduced by more than 50% across the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and Spanish La Liga. This leads to a decrease in probability for a home win, indicating that these goals are pivotal with respect to match outcomes.