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Home is where the hustle is: The influence of crowds on effort and home advantage in the National Basketball Association.

Studies have consistently shown that crowds contribute to home advantage in the National Basketball Association (NBA) by inspiring home team effort, distracting opponents, and influencing referees. Quantifying the effect of crowds is challenging, however, due to potential co-occurring drivers of home advantage (e.g., travel, location familiarity). Therefore, the present research aims to isolate the crowd effect by utilizing a ‘natural experiment’ created by the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which eliminated crowds in approximately 50% of games in the 2020/2021 NBA regular season (N = 1080). Using mixed models (fixed effect: crowds; random effects: team, opponent) we show, in games with crowds, home teams won 58.65% of games and outrebounded (average rebound differential = 2.28 rebounds) and outscored (average points differential = 2.18 points) their opponents. This was a significant improvement compared to games without crowds, of which home teams won 50.60% of games (p < .001) and failed to outrebound (average rebound differential = -0.41 rebounds, p < .001) or outscore (average points differential = -0.13 points, p < .05) their opponents. Further, the crowd-related increase in average rebound differential fully mediated the relationship between crowds and average points differential. Taken together, these results suggest that home advantage in the 2020/2021 NBA season was predominately driven by the presence of home crowds and their influence on the effort exerted to rebound the basketball.