--- title: Are Home Teams Favoured by Referees in Football/Soccer? description: A data-driven investigation into whether football referees favour home teams. Using data from 54,000+ matches across 14 European leagues, the analysis measures... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/are-home-teams-favoured-by-referees-in-football-soccer--2d5y3szbj twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Are Home Teams Favoured by Referees in Football/Soccer? | daily.dev og:description: A data-driven investigation into whether football referees favour home teams. Using data from 54,000+ matches across 14 European leagues, the analysis measures... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/are-home-teams-favoured-by-referees-in-football-soccer--2d5y3szbj og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/2D5Y3SZbJ.png og:image:alt: Are Home Teams Favoured by Referees in Football/Soccer? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Are Home Teams Favoured by Referees in Football/Soccer? **[Towards Data Science](https://daily.dev/sources/tds)** · 17 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A data-driven investigation into whether football referees favour home teams. Using data from 54,000+ matches across 14 European leagues, the analysis measures cards-per-foul as the key metric rather than raw card counts. After controlling for team strength, territorial dominance, half-time score, and pre-match odds, home teams are still booked 6.3% less often per foul than away teams. The COVID-era empty stadium experiment provides the strongest evidence: the home card advantage virtually disappeared without crowds (losing 101% of its effect), while on-pitch home advantages only halved. The conclusion is that crowd pressure on referees — not club prestige or team quality — drives the home whistle bias. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Do referees favor home teams in football, and by how much? Yes, home teams are punished about 6.3% less often per foul than their opponents in the same match, even after controlling for team strength (pre-match odds), territorial dominance, half-time score, and corners. Across roughly 54,000 matches analyzed, this gap held with a 95% confidence interval of 5.0% to 7.6%. _daily.dev surfaces data-driven sports analytics writeups like this for developers curious about applied statistics._ ### Does playing in empty stadiums during COVID reduce home team advantage in referee decisions? Yes, the home card advantage collapsed almost entirely in empty stadiums, dropping by about 101% during the 2020/21 season played behind closed doors, compared to only a 38-54% drop in on-pitch metrics like goals, shots, and corners. This suggests crowd pressure specifically affects referee decisions more than it affects team performance. _anyone studying natural experiments in data can follow analyses like this one on daily.dev._ ### Are bigger, favored football clubs given preferential treatment by referees compared to weaker teams? Not directly for being big clubs; instead, heavy favourites receive a softer whistle because of playing style, not reputation. When the home side is a heavy favourite it is booked 4.1 fewer times per 100 fouls, but this effect disappears once territorial dominance and match context are accounted for, since favourites simply commit less punishable fouls. _developers weighing correlation versus causation in sports data can track this kind of reasoning via daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [We Thought We Had Predicted the World Cup.](https://daily.dev/posts/we-thought-we-had-predicted-the-world-cup--c9xqjvull) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [When Data Lies: Finding Optimal Strategies for Penalty Kicks with Game Theory](https://daily.dev/posts/when-data-lies-finding-optimal-strategies-for-penalty-kicks-with-game-theory-sg5mitm4d) · Towards Data Science · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Home-Field Disadvantage: AiTM, QR-Code Phishing, and Infostealers at the 2026 FIFA World Cup](https://daily.dev/posts/home-field-disadvantage-aitm-qr-code-phishing-and-infostealers-at-the-2026-fifa-world-cup-rqq3rc1xz) · Arctic Wolf · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How the 2026 World Cup affected Internet traffic](https://daily.dev/posts/how-the-2026-world-cup-affected-internet-traffic-ti3jxrsaa) · Cloudflare · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#python](https://daily.dev/tags/python), [#data-analysis](https://daily.dev/tags/data-analysis) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/are-home-teams-favoured-by-referees-in-football-soccer--2d5y3szbj) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Are Home Teams Favoured by Referees in Football/Soccer?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/are-home-teams-favoured-by-referees-in-football-soccer--2d5y3szbj","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/are-home-teams-favoured-by-referees-in-football-soccer--2d5y3szbj"},"datePublished":"2026-08-04T14:05:44.107Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:16:01.722Z","description":"A data-driven investigation into whether football referees favour home teams. 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Across roughly 54,000 matches analyzed, this gap held with a 95% confidence interval of 5.0% to 7.6%. daily.dev surfaces data-driven sports analytics writeups like this for developers curious about applied statistics."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Does playing in empty stadiums during COVID reduce home team advantage in referee decisions?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Yes, the home card advantage collapsed almost entirely in empty stadiums, dropping by about 101% during the 2020/21 season played behind closed doors, compared to only a 38-54% drop in on-pitch metrics like goals, shots, and corners. This suggests crowd pressure specifically affects referee decisions more than it affects team performance. anyone studying natural experiments in data can follow analyses like this one on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Are bigger, favored football clubs given preferential treatment by referees compared to weaker teams?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Not directly for being big clubs; instead, heavy favourites receive a softer whistle because of playing style, not reputation. When the home side is a heavy favourite it is booked 4.1 fewer times per 100 fouls, but this effect disappears once territorial dominance and match context are accounted for, since favourites simply commit less punishable fouls. developers weighing correlation versus causation in sports data can track this kind of reasoning via daily.dev."}}]} ```