A popular betting strategy relies on one thing, such as the house advantage, as a foundation to build on. Home advantage in sports is something that is talked about a lot.
There has been a lot of research done on the subject that team performance tends to be better at home than on the road.
This is something that is also reflected in the sports betting odds you see in sportsbooks such as those rated by Legalbet, a service that analyzes bookmakers and their offers. Home favorites are a popular pick for watchers, and even a weak side, who might be under 3/1 against a title contender away from home, could have their odds adjusted to something like 11/4 or 13/5 at home. against the same powerful opponent.
But does home advantage matter in every game? Here we look at three of the best games that have already produced small spaces for home teams.
Why Do Teams Work Better at Home?
There are some interesting facts about why teams are expected to play better at home. One of them is being in a place they are familiar with and because it is their home, there is a sense of fort where they will play harder to protect that precious home place.
Not having to travel halfway across the country and living in an unfamiliar place can also have a positive impact, as well as enjoying the benefit of a lot of support from the surrounding areas. Crowd influence can give teams a second wind when they need it, and they may be hostile enough to stop a referee from making a decision against their team.
But there are certain sports where the home advantage is diluted compared to others.
It’s baseball
MLB has the lowest home win rate in sports. In 2019, the Washington Nationals went 0-3 at home in the World Series, which sounds like they should be in deep trouble. Since there is no domestic form, they should not have worked.
But surprisingly, they still won the championship series 4-3 because their rivals, the Houston Aeros, lost all four of their home games. Not every game in the World Series has been won by the away team. That, however, took a long time to happen.
During the 2023 MLB Playoffs, there were more road wins than home wins during the playoffs. That’s been the trend over the past five years in the world’s biggest baseball league. So with betting, the point of view is that the house advantage is not as strong as it is thought to be. Japan’s Nippon League actually tends to run at a slightly lower home success rate than MLB.
ice hockey
Staying in the North American region, the National Hockey League is a high-level competition where things are often evenly split across the board. Since 2008 regular season results in the world’s major ice-hockey league have produced anywhere between a 52% and 58% success rate for teams on home ice.
But when things get to the playoffs, the numbers are very different. Then look at the between 45% and 69% home advantage success rate in the Playoffs and the low end of that is very low, potentially giving betting windows.
American rugby
The average home win rate in international rugby is around 55-58%, which is about the same as the NFL. That puts these games at one of the lowest home success rates, so both are good for tipping the betting edge.
Therefore, betting on a road win on an NFL weekend for example, or during a major international rugby tournament such as the Rugby Championship or the Six Nations, is statistically more likely to result in a road win than betting on European football.
See What’s Now
Just for comparison, popular competitions such as Spain’s La Liga, the English Premier League, Italy’s Serie A and the US MLS soccer field all have a home success rate of over 60% per season.
The best advice is to keep up with current trends. It is important to understand that there may be shifts from season to season where the home advantage may be calculated higher or lower than normal. There will also be strong outliers in both directions, which is why you always look at averages.
