StatsDetective 7 | Home Field Revamped

We meet again. My original contention when I did an analysis of home-field is that the betting sites and media were lying to you and today we are doubling down on that. We begin with an evisceration of two articles that make bogus claims about home-field advantage, saying that it has completely gone away. One was published at the tail end of Covid, and claimed that the advantage had been extremely low for the past 3 seasons (the Covid years). Duh. If anything, this just proves that fans in the stands make a difference. Since that time, home-field has rebounded back to where it was previously 55%.

This plays perfectly into the idea that home-field is being discounted by betting sites and pundits. The narrative that it is going away should be corrected. Not only is the bounce-back real, home-field is stronger at this point in the season than it has been in the previous two. If the trend holds and the percentage increases as the season wears on, then this could be a very strong year for fans.

The most interesting results of my analysis are the changes in the odds of winning if the first 4 weeks are excluded. +14% is nothing to sneeze at, especially when added to the original 25% increased odds. I would be interested at some point to go back and see the very long term historical trends from the 2000's and before. Right now, that would just mean a lot of data collection and time so I won't be doing that.