ABSTRACT
The home advantage (HA) effect has been widely investigated in the world’s most popular sports, notably soccer. However, there is a general lack of information about its effect on other relatively minor team and individual sports. This chapter investigates HA in a selection of such sports and explores how specific characteristics of each sport may be influencing the magnitude of any advantage found. The team sports selected were partly chosen for their breadth of world coverage. These were netball (Commonwealth countries), floorball and bandy (Scandinavia), kabbadi (India), lacrosse (North America), hurling and Gaelic football (Ireland), roller hockey (Spain and Portugal), field hockey (Commonwealth countries, Western Europe, South Asia) and speedway (Great Britain and Northern Europe). Two individual sports are also considered, surfing and sport climbing, both of which were scheduled for inclusion in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. A small but significant HA was demonstrated for most of these sports with two exceptions. For speedway HA is very large, greater than for any other sport. In contrast kabaddi, as played in the Pro Kabaddi League in India, has produced a small home disadvantage.
