Are Referees Unfair to Away Teams? Evidence from the Premier League

This study examines the contribution of the crowd effect to home advantage in the English Premier League. Using the coronavirus 2019 pandemic as a natural experiment, we test crowd effects based on the changes in the number of audiences. We find that the difference in the number of audiences has an impact on the players’ performance, leading to the home advantage. Different from previous studies, which report a referee bias induced by crowd effect, our findings suggest that the crowd effect has no direct influence on referees. Specifically, more yellow cards against away teams results from more aggressive plays by these teams, a response to performance suppression by the home crowd. Findings suggest that social pressures caused by the crowd effect influence only players, not referees.