Home Advantage

In team sports, home advantage, also called home ground, home field, home court or home ice, describes the benefit a team is said to gain from playing at its own venue rather than a visiting team's. Researchers have attributed the effect to the psychological influence of supporting fans on competitors and referees, the psychological and physiological comfort of familiar surroundings, the travel fatigue and time zone or climate disruption visiting teams face, and rules in some sports that favor the home side directly. In baseball and cricket in particular, part of the advantage also comes from a team having been assembled around the particular dimensions of its own home ground, since most other sports are played in standardized venues where that factor does not apply.