9 ms·

Referees’ home-bias in football disappears without audience: study

225 points by the-dude 6y ago

mdeck_ 6y ago
> Conclusion > We can see that referees’ bias towards away sides has completely changed without an audience in stadiums. > Previously, away sides used to get more yellow cards in all leagues, and they also had an inferior fouls to cards ratio. However, without an audience, the disparity has disappeared, and in fact, the trend has reversed in some leagues. Um, where is the analysis explaining why these circumstances are concluded to be evidence of differential referee treatment of (identical) behavior by the soccer players rather than identical referee treatment of differential behavior by the soccer players? This seems like an enormous premise that—correct or not—is accepted without a moment’s consideration.
- fwip 6y ago
  Home team referee bias is well known across many sports. If you Google it, you may find helpful studies like this one https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070403112044.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070403112044.h...
  - thethirdone 6y ago
    From your link: > Boyko studied the number of goals scored by a team at home versus those scored while away, and found that teams scored 1.5 home goals on average, and 1.1 while away. Players seems like they would have much more of an effect on goals compared to referees. Players can equally be affected by crowds. It seems very hard to separate the effects so you can show referee bias. The linked page does not show anything that confirms that referees rather than players are affected.
    - fwip 6y ago
      The very next paragraph reads: > In addition to affecting the number of goals scored, the away team received more penalties, implying that referees are making calls in favor of the home team, possibly as a result of the influence of the crowd. Some individual referees are more susceptible to these influences than others. In fact, more experienced referees are less biased by the impact of a large audience, which suggests that they may develop a resistance to effects of the crowd.
  - teachingassist 6y ago
    The parent's point is that studies such as this don't fully account for the potential for players behaving better because they are at home.
  - slg 6y ago
    I don't think that is the complaint. Referee bias is just human nature. People have a hesitancy to make a decision that will immediately cause tens of thousands of people to scream at them. That likely is the primary explanation here. Yet there is nothing done to isolate the refs outside of just averaging play among leagues and assuming that takes care of differences in play style. However players are impacted by fans just like referees. There can be a reasonable hypothesis that visiting players play less aggressively in empty stadiums which could also explain some of the observed changes. The numbers included in the article are not enough to draw conclusions on what is causing these changes.
    - lupire 6y ago
      Sports referees should relish that, knowing they are correct and empowered.
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  I wonder how that could be tested ?
  - SteveNuts 6y ago
    Make the home audience cheer for home team penalties and boo for opponent penalties and measure the outcomes maybe?
    - mulmen 6y ago
      Does Philadelphia have a soccer team?
      - nvr219 6y ago
        They do! Kevin Durant is one of the owners.
      - alamortsubite 6y ago
        I see what you did there.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - jpxw 6y ago
    You’d need to make the referees blind to which team’s stadium was home. My best shot: blindfold the referees, put them in cars, drive them to random stadiums (of teams they have never refereed and have never seen the inside of - so preferably in a different country)*, put noise-cancelling headphones on them and dress all fans in white shirts. * or use a different stadium but fill it with more home than away supporters? But then perhaps the home effect relies on it being the home stadium.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      Um, any professional referee that cannot tell what stadium they are in clearly are not familiar enough with the sport to be a referee
- hashkb 6y ago
  That's always the case with study vs experiment. If you didn't control for all the variables but one, you can't make a conclusion about cause. I think the honest thing to do is to include alternate hypotheses; or at least mention some possible confounding circumstances.
  - the_benno 6y ago
    Many SE research papers include a "threats to validity" section which is more or less what you're describing
  - IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
    As i mentioned elsewhere, the spanish league 19-20 followed the first VAR season. There were many adjustments to VAR heading into the Covid season. I would flag that as confounding factot
- JimTheMan 6y ago
  Often I feel that the commentary to science has a lot of what-if pedantry beyond that which is reasonable. I am unsure how you would address this what-if issue. It's not a variable that can be measured or controlled easily and the means of measuring that would be up for contention. Sometimes things aren't as complicated as people make them want to be.
  - nightowl_games 6y ago
    Without inquisitive rigor, the hypothesis offered by the study author is also merely "what if pedantry".
  - pottertheotter 6y ago
    Good scientific papers explicitly state what you can and cannot conclude from the data. Even if it is a case of "this is the best we can do" because there's no data to address the omitted variable, that should be clear. I have a PhD in an area where (a) it's difficult to conduct experiments, and (b) it's often hard or impossible to get data for some variables. No one likes the person who critiques a paper presentation by saying, "you're not controlling for variable x" without providing a reason why it's an omitted variable and how you can proxy for it (if it's not directly available). But you also won't get far if you aren't clear about the limitations of your paper.
  - ksm1717 6y ago
    If it can’t be measured or controlled then conclusions which forgo it are not valid!
  - imwillofficial 6y ago
    Punching a serious hole in the logic is hardly “ what-if pedantry”
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lamontcg 6y ago
  Yeah away teams not under the emotional pressure of the crowds may keep their cool better and not cross the line into getting cards. You'd need some objective way to determine if fouls deserved or didn't deserve a yellow card and be able to show that the same fouls were still being committed, but the refs were judging them differently.
- cesaref 6y ago
  Absolutely. I think the players are behaving differently. My thought is that the games will appear to be more similar to training ground practices where the opposition are your own teammates, so the sorts of tackles and behaviour the players express will be different as you don't want to risk injuring your own teammates. Overall i think the quality of football played has improved without crowds although it's not the same experience without the fans.
- notahacker 6y ago
  Biggest problem is they don't have an explanation for the trend "reversing". If the hypothesis referee bias in front of home crowds is the main factor is correct, home and away card allocations should follow the same pattern within a small margin of error in the absence of crowds, not reversed with sometimes greater magnitude. Most obvious reason for away teams committing more fouls per booking in an empty stadium is tactical: away teams are often set up to defend more, in a well structured manner, which means the ratio of inconsequential fouls vs cynical fouls to stop the counter attack, massive misjudgements and losses of temper is likely to be higher This is compatible with the hypothesis that a 'biased' ref is less likely to let a side get away with regular inconsequential fouls when the fans are screaming at him. But it's also conceding the very large role played by tactical approaches which stats suggest have also changed since the pandemic
BurningFrog 6y ago
The classic proof that it's about audience effect is that arenas where the audience is further from the field have smaller home field advantage.
- esja 6y ago
  Sure, but even if true, that doesn’t indicate who the audience is affecting more: the home players, the away players, or the referee.
treeman79 6y ago
What about home games where most of the crowd is from out of town? Went to a Florida hockey game. Most of the fans were from Canada. Was an interesting experience.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  If I remember something I read years ago correctly, the home rink advantage in hockey is too reliant on bench location to isolate other factors. The team with the long change is penalized more, and away teams have two periods of long change.
  - Infernal 6y ago
    I think you’ve misunderstood. One team cannot have a long change by themselves. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/WHx5uipGxRojhsFHQKJawpvuTwuUab_BNR9X5BBP_dUm9krxoZhqxg-Zriy254-SzPyko8k5DyE3X9JdaV_FzG2ANOKp1X3agFn3rIQn6lnQaEVPp-fPv6wCSs0sxBpX1-TfqAX7 https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/WHx5uipGxRojhsFHQKJawpvuTw...
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      I am misremembering some aspect of it, something about the benches still ends up with a significant home ice advantage.
- mbg721 6y ago
  I'm curious about this also; the case that came to my mind is a daytime baseball game where the Cubs are in Milwaukee.
hirundo 6y ago
Any reason the same effect wouldn't apply to a judge or jury in a court case that draws a large audience?
- hashkb 6y ago
  Because the audience is discouraged from screaming and they're less intoxicated?
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  There's no "home team"? There's lots of psychological stuff that influences jury decisions, but I have trouble seeing how this specific metric could apply.
  - jMyles 6y ago
    Have you ever been to such a proceeding? It's pretty obvious whom the crowd is there to support. I am absolutely convinced that this effect resulted in a successful outcome for me.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      I didn't mean to suggest that audience sentiment wouldn't have any effect at all. "Home team advantage" is about being able to reliably predict ahead of time without even setting foot in the place which side is more likely to win. The team geographically associated with that place is more likely to win and there may be many different variables that impact that, such as familiarity with the stadium helping to give them a playing edge. There may well be courts where you can predict ahead of time who is likely to win based on skin color, type of case, etc. There probably are trends of that sort. But to make that prediction, you would need to know more about the court in question and the case in question than "who is from around here and who is visiting". If the question is really meant to ask "Will audience sentiment impact jury opinion?" that's entirely possible, but may not always be in the direction the audience would like. There will be a lot of factors there that impact if the audience reaction sways the jury or makes them dig their heels in further.
nemo44x 6y ago
Maybe the players commit more fouls/illegal plays when the crowd is pressuring them?
brudgers 6y ago
Makes sense. Yellow cards are a tool to prevent escalation. With fans the home team has more encouragement toward "street justice." The football referee has only one job. To keep the peace. It's a Hobbesian reflection of football's British roots. Good referees only call the fouls that matter and the great referees make fewer fouls matter because that's what the fans deserve. Imagine if Howard Webb had sent off Nigel de Jong in the 28th minute of the 2010 World Cup Final. Although he's on record as saying it was clearly a red card offense, he didn't see it that way in the moment and a world of fans were treated to a memorable match versus an hour and a half of Spanish tic-a-tok-a against ten players.
- hervature 6y ago
  You're letting outcomes dictate your opinions. What if Alonso didn't recover from that challenge and Netherlands won 5-0? Would your opinion on the yellow stay the same?
  - brudgers 6y ago
    My opinion is based on a little experience refereeing and a lot of geeking out about it. The Webb incident was the top referee in the world refereeing the top game in the world. Webb had already given four yellows by the twenty eighth minute. Alonso got up. Twenty years earlier it might not have even been a yellow card. In that game at that moment all that was needed was a yellow card. The game went on and didn’t spiral out of control until after the late winner. Or to put my opinion in perspective my referee geekery is why I know what Webb said later. At the time the announcers weren’t howling for a red. Neither were the players on the pitch. A yellow kept the peace. A much better critique of my argument would point out that the Dutch were officially the home team and that history also would have given them a better claim to home team as well. But the Dutch did end with ten so there’s that. Yet Webb managed to disperse the first eight Dutch yellow cards to eight different Dutch starters. That’s good refereeing...keeping the peace.
    - ksm1717 6y ago
      I agree. Abruptly sending a player off only works punitively to give permanent advantage to one team. Home fans that feel ripped off by a “missed” red card might instead feel some hidden guilt or something, even if they won’t admit it. Their team didn’t prove they could beat the opponent at full strength. I think it’s a rare occasion that a fan would fully support a decision against their team; the rules are only perfectly carried out when they benefit me. I suppose this is different when the game is a 1/38 league match instead of a winner takes all situation. Spectators are disenchanted by combat sport matches being won by technicality - and that kind of outcome is part of those rules! It’s all about entertainment and exciting competition after all, right?
foolinaround 6y ago
Has a similar study been made on the impact on a jury in high profile cases conducted in the immediate surroundings, such as in the recent Floyd - Chauvin case?
- mygoodaccount 6y ago
  Your comment history is replete with making unpolitical threads political.
  - foolinaround 6y ago
    Were'nt you commenting or downvoting in an apolitical manner too? Is'nt my question related to the topic? And if so, why not discuss it? Have'nt you ever seen HN threads that did touch on peripheral topics? Or are you trying to stifle conversations?
jerzyt 6y ago
Even as an observational study, it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. First and foremost, all the values are fairly close pre and during Covid, but there are no confidence intervals for any of the differences. Not even sure that the reported differences are statistically significant.
MomoXenosaga 6y ago
Not really a big deal in competition matches because each team has to play against every other team twice. Once at home and once afield. It balances out. But it leads me to some musing: if we could remove the human element and replace it with infallible decision making AI would it improve the sport? In football they're trying to get there with cameras.
- Mapsmithy 6y ago
  >if we could remove the human element and replace it with infallible decision making AI would it improve sport? Probably for some sports and for some elements of other sports. I've thought about this in regards to an umpire's strike zone in baseball. If the strike zone were the same every single time, this might tip the scales in one direction (probably batters). Let's say it advantaged offense even moreso, do higher scoring games make better sport, or are they more enjoyable to watch? I dont know, but personally I've always enjoyed the slightly random element of the strike zone.
- Mulpze15 6y ago
  It would not improve soccer in my opinion. Sometimes the ref needs to not whistle a hand ball. It is a judgment call. And sometimes referees need to whistle an attempt at hand ball. To help with the spirit of the game. Good luck with AI being good at that.
- thom 6y ago
  That actually is potentially a big deal in soccer, because if both teams win their home games instead of drawing, for example, they both come out ahead on points.
- erfgh 6y ago
  It is a big deal because crowd size varies widely between clubs. Big clubs have so many fans that even in their away matches they have comparable crowds with their opponents.
roland35 6y ago
Interestingly enough, in 2020 NFL home teams had a losing record for the first time! https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/1/6/22216167/nfl-playoffs-home-field-advantage-covid-19-restrictions https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/1/6/22216167/nfl-playoffs...
IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
There is an elephant in the room. Big confondounding factor: VAR. In spain at least it was deployed on the season prior to the covid season (19-20). That 1st season was a trial and many adjustments were made to it which presumably came to full force in the year of covid.
dylan604 6y ago
What I find more interesting than referee bias is the loss of the home field advantage. The influence of the home fans on the home team can give them that extra push, or intimidate the away team just enough to make them just that split second off their normal play.
pseingatl 6y ago
Are the results restricted to the world of sports? Unlikely. So what do the results teach about juries? About trials generally? About televised trials? About trials packed with spectators? Hmmm.
the_gipsy 6y ago
I vaguely remember that there have been some cases where referees have been chaesed and beaten up after the game. Probably a combination of decisive game, and a wrong call by referee. Nowadays VAR has been introduced, so referees can finally rectify their decisions, and also hooligan violence is much more under control. The gist of it is still there though. A mob of hooligans tries to rally their team to be more aggressive, and if the referee intervenes, there is also a threat of violence against him. That's soccer. We have seen that now, with covid, it loses the appeal without the crowd and the ceremony. It's just like watching a soccer-videogame stream or something, the actual sport is meaningless.
anjc 6y ago
Interesting work. A few points: 1) The article segues from saying "a home team advantage exists", which is provable via score sheets, to "referees are biased against away teams", which is difficult to prove and needs justification. I think the former premise is better 2) It should be easy to add tests for statistical significance. From eyeballing I'm not sure that they're significant 3) Different rules have been implemented that may account for any significant differences, e.g., VAR, new handball rules Other than this finding, I wonder if any other artefacts of no-audiences exist. Such as the average number of goals for away teams, penalty taking accuracy.
oldgradstudent 6y ago
So what's their evidence for a referee home bias? The fact that referees give more yellow cards to away teams could be explained by, for example, away teams deserving more yellow cards. Yet another BS observational study that claims casualty.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

225 points by the-dude 6y ago

> Conclusion > We can see that referees’ bias towards away sides has completely changed without an audience in stadiums. > Previously, away sides used to get more yellow cards in all leagues, and they also had an inferior fouls to cards ratio. However, without an audience, the disparity has disappeared, and in fact, the trend has reversed in some leagues. Um, where is the analysis explaining why these circumstances are concluded to be evidence of differential referee treatment of (identical) behavior by the soccer players rather than identical referee treatment of differential behavior by the soccer players? This seems like an enormous premise that—correct or not—is accepted without a moment’s consideration.

fwip 6y ago
Home team referee bias is well known across many sports. If you Google it, you may find helpful studies like this one https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070403112044.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070403112044.h...
- thethirdone 6y ago
  From your link: > Boyko studied the number of goals scored by a team at home versus those scored while away, and found that teams scored 1.5 home goals on average, and 1.1 while away. Players seems like they would have much more of an effect on goals compared to referees. Players can equally be affected by crowds. It seems very hard to separate the effects so you can show referee bias. The linked page does not show anything that confirms that referees rather than players are affected.
  - fwip 6y ago
    The very next paragraph reads: > In addition to affecting the number of goals scored, the away team received more penalties, implying that referees are making calls in favor of the home team, possibly as a result of the influence of the crowd. Some individual referees are more susceptible to these influences than others. In fact, more experienced referees are less biased by the impact of a large audience, which suggests that they may develop a resistance to effects of the crowd.
- teachingassist 6y ago
  The parent's point is that studies such as this don't fully account for the potential for players behaving better because they are at home.
- slg 6y ago
  I don't think that is the complaint. Referee bias is just human nature. People have a hesitancy to make a decision that will immediately cause tens of thousands of people to scream at them. That likely is the primary explanation here. Yet there is nothing done to isolate the refs outside of just averaging play among leagues and assuming that takes care of differences in play style. However players are impacted by fans just like referees. There can be a reasonable hypothesis that visiting players play less aggressively in empty stadiums which could also explain some of the observed changes. The numbers included in the article are not enough to draw conclusions on what is causing these changes.
  - lupire 6y ago
    Sports referees should relish that, knowing they are correct and empowered.
johnchristopher 6y ago
I wonder how that could be tested ?
- SteveNuts 6y ago
  Make the home audience cheer for home team penalties and boo for opponent penalties and measure the outcomes maybe?
  - mulmen 6y ago
    Does Philadelphia have a soccer team?
    - nvr219 6y ago
      They do! Kevin Durant is one of the owners.
    - alamortsubite 6y ago
      I see what you did there.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- jpxw 6y ago
  You’d need to make the referees blind to which team’s stadium was home. My best shot: blindfold the referees, put them in cars, drive them to random stadiums (of teams they have never refereed and have never seen the inside of - so preferably in a different country)*, put noise-cancelling headphones on them and dress all fans in white shirts. * or use a different stadium but fill it with more home than away supporters? But then perhaps the home effect relies on it being the home stadium.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    Um, any professional referee that cannot tell what stadium they are in clearly are not familiar enough with the sport to be a referee
hashkb 6y ago
That's always the case with study vs experiment. If you didn't control for all the variables but one, you can't make a conclusion about cause. I think the honest thing to do is to include alternate hypotheses; or at least mention some possible confounding circumstances.
- the_benno 6y ago
  Many SE research papers include a "threats to validity" section which is more or less what you're describing
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  As i mentioned elsewhere, the spanish league 19-20 followed the first VAR season. There were many adjustments to VAR heading into the Covid season. I would flag that as confounding factot
JimTheMan 6y ago
Often I feel that the commentary to science has a lot of what-if pedantry beyond that which is reasonable. I am unsure how you would address this what-if issue. It's not a variable that can be measured or controlled easily and the means of measuring that would be up for contention. Sometimes things aren't as complicated as people make them want to be.
- nightowl_games 6y ago
  Without inquisitive rigor, the hypothesis offered by the study author is also merely "what if pedantry".
- pottertheotter 6y ago
  Good scientific papers explicitly state what you can and cannot conclude from the data. Even if it is a case of "this is the best we can do" because there's no data to address the omitted variable, that should be clear. I have a PhD in an area where (a) it's difficult to conduct experiments, and (b) it's often hard or impossible to get data for some variables. No one likes the person who critiques a paper presentation by saying, "you're not controlling for variable x" without providing a reason why it's an omitted variable and how you can proxy for it (if it's not directly available). But you also won't get far if you aren't clear about the limitations of your paper.
- ksm1717 6y ago
  If it can’t be measured or controlled then conclusions which forgo it are not valid!
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  Punching a serious hole in the logic is hardly “ what-if pedantry”
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lamontcg 6y ago
Yeah away teams not under the emotional pressure of the crowds may keep their cool better and not cross the line into getting cards. You'd need some objective way to determine if fouls deserved or didn't deserve a yellow card and be able to show that the same fouls were still being committed, but the refs were judging them differently.
cesaref 6y ago
Absolutely. I think the players are behaving differently. My thought is that the games will appear to be more similar to training ground practices where the opposition are your own teammates, so the sorts of tackles and behaviour the players express will be different as you don't want to risk injuring your own teammates. Overall i think the quality of football played has improved without crowds although it's not the same experience without the fans.
notahacker 6y ago
Biggest problem is they don't have an explanation for the trend "reversing". If the hypothesis referee bias in front of home crowds is the main factor is correct, home and away card allocations should follow the same pattern within a small margin of error in the absence of crowds, not reversed with sometimes greater magnitude. Most obvious reason for away teams committing more fouls per booking in an empty stadium is tactical: away teams are often set up to defend more, in a well structured manner, which means the ratio of inconsequential fouls vs cynical fouls to stop the counter attack, massive misjudgements and losses of temper is likely to be higher This is compatible with the hypothesis that a 'biased' ref is less likely to let a side get away with regular inconsequential fouls when the fans are screaming at him. But it's also conceding the very large role played by tactical approaches which stats suggest have also changed since the pandemic

BurningFrog 6y ago

The classic proof that it's about audience effect is that arenas where the audience is further from the field have smaller home field advantage.

esja 6y ago
Sure, but even if true, that doesn’t indicate who the audience is affecting more: the home players, the away players, or the referee.

treeman79 6y ago

What about home games where most of the crowd is from out of town? Went to a Florida hockey game. Most of the fans were from Canada. Was an interesting experience.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
If I remember something I read years ago correctly, the home rink advantage in hockey is too reliant on bench location to isolate other factors. The team with the long change is penalized more, and away teams have two periods of long change.
- Infernal 6y ago
  I think you’ve misunderstood. One team cannot have a long change by themselves. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/WHx5uipGxRojhsFHQKJawpvuTwuUab_BNR9X5BBP_dUm9krxoZhqxg-Zriy254-SzPyko8k5DyE3X9JdaV_FzG2ANOKp1X3agFn3rIQn6lnQaEVPp-fPv6wCSs0sxBpX1-TfqAX7 https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/WHx5uipGxRojhsFHQKJawpvuTw...
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    I am misremembering some aspect of it, something about the benches still ends up with a significant home ice advantage.
mbg721 6y ago
I'm curious about this also; the case that came to my mind is a daytime baseball game where the Cubs are in Milwaukee.

hirundo 6y ago

Any reason the same effect wouldn't apply to a judge or jury in a court case that draws a large audience?

hashkb 6y ago
Because the audience is discouraged from screaming and they're less intoxicated?
DoreenMichele 6y ago
There's no "home team"? There's lots of psychological stuff that influences jury decisions, but I have trouble seeing how this specific metric could apply.
- jMyles 6y ago
  Have you ever been to such a proceeding? It's pretty obvious whom the crowd is there to support. I am absolutely convinced that this effect resulted in a successful outcome for me.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    I didn't mean to suggest that audience sentiment wouldn't have any effect at all. "Home team advantage" is about being able to reliably predict ahead of time without even setting foot in the place which side is more likely to win. The team geographically associated with that place is more likely to win and there may be many different variables that impact that, such as familiarity with the stadium helping to give them a playing edge. There may well be courts where you can predict ahead of time who is likely to win based on skin color, type of case, etc. There probably are trends of that sort. But to make that prediction, you would need to know more about the court in question and the case in question than "who is from around here and who is visiting". If the question is really meant to ask "Will audience sentiment impact jury opinion?" that's entirely possible, but may not always be in the direction the audience would like. There will be a lot of factors there that impact if the audience reaction sways the jury or makes them dig their heels in further.

nemo44x 6y ago

Maybe the players commit more fouls/illegal plays when the crowd is pressuring them?

brudgers 6y ago

Makes sense. Yellow cards are a tool to prevent escalation. With fans the home team has more encouragement toward "street justice." The football referee has only one job. To keep the peace. It's a Hobbesian reflection of football's British roots. Good referees only call the fouls that matter and the great referees make fewer fouls matter because that's what the fans deserve. Imagine if Howard Webb had sent off Nigel de Jong in the 28th minute of the 2010 World Cup Final. Although he's on record as saying it was clearly a red card offense, he didn't see it that way in the moment and a world of fans were treated to a memorable match versus an hour and a half of Spanish tic-a-tok-a against ten players.

hervature 6y ago
You're letting outcomes dictate your opinions. What if Alonso didn't recover from that challenge and Netherlands won 5-0? Would your opinion on the yellow stay the same?
- brudgers 6y ago
  My opinion is based on a little experience refereeing and a lot of geeking out about it. The Webb incident was the top referee in the world refereeing the top game in the world. Webb had already given four yellows by the twenty eighth minute. Alonso got up. Twenty years earlier it might not have even been a yellow card. In that game at that moment all that was needed was a yellow card. The game went on and didn’t spiral out of control until after the late winner. Or to put my opinion in perspective my referee geekery is why I know what Webb said later. At the time the announcers weren’t howling for a red. Neither were the players on the pitch. A yellow kept the peace. A much better critique of my argument would point out that the Dutch were officially the home team and that history also would have given them a better claim to home team as well. But the Dutch did end with ten so there’s that. Yet Webb managed to disperse the first eight Dutch yellow cards to eight different Dutch starters. That’s good refereeing...keeping the peace.
  - ksm1717 6y ago
    I agree. Abruptly sending a player off only works punitively to give permanent advantage to one team. Home fans that feel ripped off by a “missed” red card might instead feel some hidden guilt or something, even if they won’t admit it. Their team didn’t prove they could beat the opponent at full strength. I think it’s a rare occasion that a fan would fully support a decision against their team; the rules are only perfectly carried out when they benefit me. I suppose this is different when the game is a 1/38 league match instead of a winner takes all situation. Spectators are disenchanted by combat sport matches being won by technicality - and that kind of outcome is part of those rules! It’s all about entertainment and exciting competition after all, right?

foolinaround 6y ago

Has a similar study been made on the impact on a jury in high profile cases conducted in the immediate surroundings, such as in the recent Floyd - Chauvin case?

mygoodaccount 6y ago
Your comment history is replete with making unpolitical threads political.
- foolinaround 6y ago
  Were'nt you commenting or downvoting in an apolitical manner too? Is'nt my question related to the topic? And if so, why not discuss it? Have'nt you ever seen HN threads that did touch on peripheral topics? Or are you trying to stifle conversations?

jerzyt 6y ago

Even as an observational study, it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. First and foremost, all the values are fairly close pre and during Covid, but there are no confidence intervals for any of the differences. Not even sure that the reported differences are statistically significant.

MomoXenosaga 6y ago

Not really a big deal in competition matches because each team has to play against every other team twice. Once at home and once afield. It balances out. But it leads me to some musing: if we could remove the human element and replace it with infallible decision making AI would it improve the sport? In football they're trying to get there with cameras.

Mapsmithy 6y ago
>if we could remove the human element and replace it with infallible decision making AI would it improve sport? Probably for some sports and for some elements of other sports. I've thought about this in regards to an umpire's strike zone in baseball. If the strike zone were the same every single time, this might tip the scales in one direction (probably batters). Let's say it advantaged offense even moreso, do higher scoring games make better sport, or are they more enjoyable to watch? I dont know, but personally I've always enjoyed the slightly random element of the strike zone.
Mulpze15 6y ago
It would not improve soccer in my opinion. Sometimes the ref needs to not whistle a hand ball. It is a judgment call. And sometimes referees need to whistle an attempt at hand ball. To help with the spirit of the game. Good luck with AI being good at that.
thom 6y ago
That actually is potentially a big deal in soccer, because if both teams win their home games instead of drawing, for example, they both come out ahead on points.
erfgh 6y ago
It is a big deal because crowd size varies widely between clubs. Big clubs have so many fans that even in their away matches they have comparable crowds with their opponents.

roland35 6y ago

Interestingly enough, in 2020 NFL home teams had a losing record for the first time! https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/1/6/22216167/nfl-playoffs-home-field-advantage-covid-19-restrictions https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/1/6/22216167/nfl-playoffs...

IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago

There is an elephant in the room. Big confondounding factor: VAR. In spain at least it was deployed on the season prior to the covid season (19-20). That 1st season was a trial and many adjustments were made to it which presumably came to full force in the year of covid.

dylan604 6y ago

What I find more interesting than referee bias is the loss of the home field advantage. The influence of the home fans on the home team can give them that extra push, or intimidate the away team just enough to make them just that split second off their normal play.

pseingatl 6y ago

Are the results restricted to the world of sports? Unlikely. So what do the results teach about juries? About trials generally? About televised trials? About trials packed with spectators? Hmmm.

the_gipsy 6y ago

I vaguely remember that there have been some cases where referees have been chaesed and beaten up after the game. Probably a combination of decisive game, and a wrong call by referee. Nowadays VAR has been introduced, so referees can finally rectify their decisions, and also hooligan violence is much more under control. The gist of it is still there though. A mob of hooligans tries to rally their team to be more aggressive, and if the referee intervenes, there is also a threat of violence against him. That's soccer. We have seen that now, with covid, it loses the appeal without the crowd and the ceremony. It's just like watching a soccer-videogame stream or something, the actual sport is meaningless.

anjc 6y ago

Interesting work. A few points: 1) The article segues from saying "a home team advantage exists", which is provable via score sheets, to "referees are biased against away teams", which is difficult to prove and needs justification. I think the former premise is better 2) It should be easy to add tests for statistical significance. From eyeballing I'm not sure that they're significant 3) Different rules have been implemented that may account for any significant differences, e.g., VAR, new handball rules Other than this finding, I wonder if any other artefacts of no-audiences exist. Such as the average number of goals for away teams, penalty taking accuracy.

oldgradstudent 6y ago

So what's their evidence for a referee home bias? The fact that referees give more yellow cards to away teams could be explained by, for example, away teams deserving more yellow cards. Yet another BS observational study that claims casualty.

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