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: