This paper studies the effect of fan attendance on home field advantage in top European soccer leagues. We exploit exogenous variation in the level of fan attendance driven by COVID-19 mitigation policies and find that the home field advantage, as measured by home minus away (expected) goals, is reduced by more than 50% across the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and Spanish La Liga. This leads to a decrease in probability for a home win, indicating that these goals are pivotal with respect to match outcomes.

中文翻译：

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球迷会影响体育结果吗？COVID-19 自然实验

本文研究了欧洲顶级足球联赛中球迷上座率对主场优势的影响。我们利用由 COVID-19 缓解政策驱动的球迷上座率的外生变化，发现在英超联赛、德国联赛中，以主场减去客场（预期）进球来衡量的主场优势降低了 50% 以上德甲、意甲和西甲。这导致主场获胜的概率降低，表明这些目标对于比赛结果至关重要。