Sports teams that play home games with no fans in the stands during the COVID-19 pandemic have less of a home-field advantage than they would performing in front of crowds, a study published Thursday by Frontiers in Sports and Active Living found.

This is due in part to there being less "psychological pressure" on officials overseeing what the researchers called "ghost games," which results in more objective refereeing and fewer wins by the home team, the data showed.

For example, the analysis of nearly 1,300 European soccer matches played during the 2018-19 season with fans and the 2019-20 season without fans found that referees issued significantly more yellow cards to home players for fouls in empty stadiums, the researchers said.

Those awarded to visiting players remained virtually unchanged between seasons, according to the researchers.

In addition, teams in Europe's elite soccer leagues lost significantly more of their home games and won significantly more of their away games when fans did not attend matches, they said.

"We were particularly surprised by the fact that the home teams in ghost games suddenly received so many more yellow cards for fouls," study co-author Michael Christian Leitner said in a press release.

"We want to emphasize that our work is no general criticism of referees of any sport [as] the pressure on match officials is unbelievably high nowadays," said Leitner, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Salzburg in Austria.

Just like the major sports leagues in the United States, some European soccer leagues contested matches without crowds during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This allowed the events to be held as scheduled, with a reduced risk for virus spread.

For this study, Leitner and his colleagues looked at one-loss records and other statistics for 1,286 soccer matches played across Europe between 2018 and 2020.

During the first half of the study period, between 2018 and 2019, matches were played as normal, in front of spectators, the researchers said.

However, after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, they were played as "ghost matches," with no fans in attendance, they said.

Compared with matches played n front of fans, the winning percentage for home teams in ghost matches was 18% lower, while it was 30% higher for visiting teams, the data showed.

The difference in the percentages is due to the fact that there are draws, or ties, in soccer, according to the researchers.

During the 2018-19 season, home teams won 48%, lost 28% and drew 24% of all analyzed games with regular attendance, they said.

However, in the ghost games of the 2019-20 season, home teams won 40%, lost 36% and drew 24% of all analyzed matches, the data showed.

Compared with the 2018-19 season, yellow cards issued to home-team players for criticism of officials during ghost games of 2019-2020 increased by 53%, compared with 37% for visiting players, the researchers said.

Similarly, yellow cards issued for fouls increased by 26% for home-team players and 3% for visiting athletes, they said.

The findings suggest that "unconscious favoritism" by referees appears to be one of the biggest factors in why home teams win more often than not, according to the researchers.

"We humans are pack animals and therefore our decisions depend strongly on our environment, the situation and other people present," Leitner said.

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