Home Advantage in Professional Football in Iran – Differences between Teams, Levels of Play and the Effects of Climate

Year 2017, Volume: 5 Issue: 4, 328 - 339, 17.12.2017

Richard Pollard Vasilis Armatas Seyed Hojjat Zamanı Sanı

Abstract

Although
much has been written about home advantage in football, almost all studies have
used data from European countries. To address this deficiency, a single Asian
country, Iran, was selected, with the aim of shedding fresh light onto the many
factors currently implicated with the existence of home advantage. For each
season since its creation in 2001, home advantage was quantified for each team
in the Persian Gulf Pro League, adjusting for annual league variation and team
ability. Data were also obtained for the level 2 Azadegan League. ANOVA was
used to test for differences between teams and a stepwise regression to assess
the influence of the explanatory variables which included altitude and climatic
variables. Overall home advantage was 59.3%, higher than in most Asian
countries. It was greater (p<.001) at level 2 than at level 1, and differed
between teams (p<.001), being generally high for team locations alongside
the Caspian Sea, while below average for teams from Tehran. The independent
effect of playing in high humidity increased home advantage (p<.01), whereas
it was lowered for teams playing at home in a capital city (p<.001).
Altitude, temperature and the absence of a running track had no effect.

Keywords

football, home advantage, Iran, climate, humidity, capital city, team ability, match location

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