A common strategy to follow for making betting strategies is to rely on one particular factor, such as the house edge, as a base upon which to build. Home advantage in sports is something that gets talked about a lot.
A lot of research has been done on the phenomenon that a team usually performs better at home than on the road.
This is something that is also reflected in the sports betting odds you see at sportsbooks like the ones rated by at leasta service that analyzes bookmakers and their offers. Home favorites are popular choices for punters, and even a weak team, which may be a 3/1 underdog against a title challenger 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 is home advantage equally important in all sports? Here we take a look at the top three sports that have historically produced lower profit 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 is simply by being in a familiar environment and because it is their home, there is a fortress mentality as they play more aggressively to defend their precious territory.
Not having to travel halfway across the country and be in unfamiliar surroundings can also have a positive impact, as well as enjoying the advantage of majority support from the surrounding stands. The influence of the crowd can give teams a second wind when they need it, and can potentially be hostile enough to prevent a referee from making a particular decision against their team.
But there are some sports where the house advantage is reduced compared to other sports.
baseball
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, making it seem like they should have been in big trouble. With no good form at home, they should have been out of the running.
But remarkably, they still won the championship series 4-3 because their rival, the Houston Eros, lost all four of their home games. Never before has an away team won every game in a World Series. However, this feat took a very long time to happen.
During the 2023 MLB playoffs, there were more away victories than home victories during the playoffs. This has been the trend for the past five years in the biggest league in baseball in the world. So, for betting, it is an area to watch as the house advantage is not necessarily as strong as perceived. In fact, Japan’s Nippon League tends to operate with a slightly lower home run success rate than MLB does.
Ice hockey
Staying in the North American scene, the NHL is one of the top professional rivalries where things tend to be evenly split across the board. Since 2008, regular season results in the world’s largest ice hockey league have produced a success rate of between 52% and 58% for teams on home ice.
But once things turn to the playoffs, the numbers are a lot different. So you’re looking at somewhere between 45% and 69% success rate for the house edge in qualifying, and the lower end of that is very low, which can provide betting opportunities.
Rugby and American football
The average home win rate in international rugby is around 55-58%, which is roughly the same as the NFL’s win rate. This puts these sports with one of the lowest success rates at home, so both can also be good games to target for a betting advantage.
So targeting road wins during an NRL weekend for example, or during a major international rugby tournament such as the Rugby Championship or the Six Nations, is statistically more likely to lead to road success than betting on European football.
See what’s current
Just by way of analogy, popular competitions such as La Liga, the English Premier League, Serie A and MLS all have a success rate of over 60% at home for a single season.
The best advice is to always 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 slightly more or less than usual. There are also likely to be very strong teams in both directions as well, which is why you always look at the averages.
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