A popular strategy to undertake for strategising bets is leaning on one particular factor, like home advantage, as a base from which to build. The home advantage in sports is something that’s talked about a lot.
There has been a ton of research done on the phenomenon where a team’s performance is typically better at home than it is out on the road.
This is something that’s also reflected in the sports betting odds that you see at sportsbooks such as those rated by Legalbet, a service which analyses bookmakers and their offers. Home favourites are popular picks for punters, and even a weak team, who may be a 3/1 underdog against a title contender away from home, may have their odds adjusted to something like 11/4 or 13/5 if they are at home against the same strong opponent.
But does home advantage matter as much in all sports? Here we have a look at the top three sports which have historically produced thinner margins for home teams.
Why Do Teams Perform Better at Home?
There are some fascinating facts about why teams are expected to play better at home. One of them is simply being in familiar surroundings and because it’s their home, there is a fortress mentality when they will play that little bit harder to defend that precious home territory.
Not having to travel halfway across the country and staying in unfamiliar surroundings can also have a positive effect, as well as enjoying the benefit of majority support from the surrounding stands. Crowd influence can give teams a second wind when they need it, and potentially be hostile enough to put a referee off making a certain decision against their team.
But there are some sports where the home advantage gets watered down compared to others.
Baseball
The MLB has one of the lowest rates of home wins in sports. In 2019, the Washington Nationals went 0-3 at home in the World Series, which sounds like they should have been in big trouble. With no home form, they should have been out of the running.
But remarkably, they still won the championship series 4-3 because their opponents, the Houston Aeros, lost all four of their home matches. Never before had all matches in the World Series been won by the away team. That feat, however, did take a very long time to happen.
During the 2023 MLB Playoffs, there were more away wins than home wins during the playoffs. That has been the trend in the last five years in the world’s biggest baseball league. So for betting, it’s an area to watch where home advantage isn’t necessarily as strong as it’s made out to be. Japan’s Nippon League actually tends to run at a slightly lower home success rate than even the MLB does.
Ice Hockey
Staying in the North American scene, the National Hockey League is a top professional competition where things tend to be pretty evenly split across the boards. Since 2008 the regular season results in the world’s biggest ice-hockey league have produced a rate of anywhere between a 52% and 58% success rate for teams on home ice.
But once things shift over to the playoffs, the numbers become a lot different. Then you are looking at between 45% and 69% home advantage success rate in the Playoff and the lower end of that is extremely low, potentially providing windows for betting.
Rugby and American Football
The average home win rate in international rugby is about 55-58%, which is roughly the same as the NFL. That puts these sports at one of the lower rates for home successes, so they can also both be good ones to target for a betting edge.
So targeting road wins during a weekend of the NFL for example, or during a big international rugby tournament like the Rugby Championship or Six Nations, is more likely to churn up a road success than a bet on European soccer statistically.
See What’s Current
Just for measure, popular competitions like Spain’s La Liga, the English Premier League, Italy’s Serie A and the US MLS soccer scene all typically have well over a 60% home success rate for a season.
The best advice is to always keep up with the current trends. It’s important to understand that there may be shifts from season to season where home advantage may count for a little more or less than usual. There will also likely be really strong outlier teams in both directions as well, which is why you always look at averages.
