This paper examines the relationship between the size of crowds and substitution decisions made by managers in the top five European football leagues between 2017 and 2021. While the size of the crowd is unrelated to substitutions made by managers of the home team, the data show that managers of the away team make more defensive substitutions when they are playing against a team with a large crowd in its stadium. The result emerges both in comparing games with fans to ghost games during the pandemic and in comparing games with many fans to games with few fans in the pre-pandemic era. The conclusion that away managers are more defensive in their choices in the presence of large crowds is consistent with the theory that fans put social pressure on managers and that negative social pressure induces fear, which leads to pessimism and risk-averse decisions.
AmezS.NeytB.Van NuffelF.BaertS. (2021). The right man in the right place? Substitutions and goal-scoring in soccer. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 54, 101898. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2021.101898
2.
BalmerN. J.NevillA. M.LaneA. M.WardP. (2007). Influence of crowd noise on soccer refereeing consistency in soccer. Journal of Sport Behavior, 30(2), 130.
3.
BuraimoB.ForrestD.SimmonsR. (2010). The 12th man?: Refereeing bias in English and German soccer. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society, 173(2), 431–449. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-985X.2009.00604.x
4.
ClarkeS. R.NormanJ. M. (1995). Home ground advantage of individual clubs in English soccer. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series D (the Statistician), 44(4), 509–521.
5.
Del CorralJ.BarrosC. P.Prieto-RodriguezJ. (2008). The determinants of soccer player substitutions: A survival analysis of the spanish soccer league. Journal of Sports Economics, 9(2), 160–172. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527002507308309
6.
EndrichM.GescheT. (2020). Home-bias in referee decisions: Evidence from “ghost matches” during the Covid19-pandemic. Economics Letters, 197, 109621. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109621
7.
GaricanoL.Palacios-HuertaI.PrendergastC. (2005). Favoritism under social pressure. Review of Economics and Statistics, 87(2), 208–216. https://doi.org/10.1162/0034653053970267
8.
GomezM.Lago-PeñasC.OwenL. A. (2016). The influence of substitutions on elite soccer teams’ performance. International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, 16(2), 553–568. https://doi.org/10.1080/24748668.2016.11868908
MariniM. M. (2023). Emotions and financial risk-taking in the lab: A meta-analysis. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 36(4), e2342. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2342
12.
McCarrickD.BilalicM.NeaveN.WolfsonS. (2021). Home advantage during the COVID-19 pandemic: Analyses of European football leagues. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 56, 102013. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2021.102013
13.
MyersB. R. (2012). A proposed decision rule for the timing of soccer substitutions. Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1515/1559-0410.1349
14.
NevillA. M.BalmerN. J.WilliamsA. M. (2002). The influence of crowd noise and experience upon refereeing decisions in football. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 3(4), 261–272. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1469-0292(01)00033-4
15.
ReadeJ.SchreyerD.SingletonC. (2022). Echoes: What happens when football is played behind closed doors?Economic Inquiry, 60(3), 1416–1436. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.13063
16.
ReyE.Lago-BallesterosJ.Padrón-CaboA. (2015). Timing and tactical analysis of player substitutions in the UEFA champions league. International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, 15(3), 840–850. https://doi.org/10.1080/24748668.2015.11868835
17.
ScoppaV. (2021). Social pressure in the stadiums: Do agents change behavior without crowd support. Journal of Economic Psychology, 82, 102344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2020.102344
18.
StaufenbielK.LobingerB.StraussB. (2015). Home advantage in soccer–A matter of expectations, goal setting and tactical decisions of coaches?Journal of Sports Sciences, 33(18), 1932–1941. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2015.1018929
19.
StoneE. R.Bruine de BruinW.WilkinsA. M.BokerE. M.MacDonald GibsonJ. (2017). Designing graphs to communicate risks: Understanding how the choice of graphical format influences decision making. Risk Analysis, 37(4), 612–628. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12660
WittkugelJ.MemmertD.WunderlichF. (2022). Substitutions in football–what coaches think and what coaches do. Journal of Sports Sciences, 40(15), 1668–1677. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2022.2099177
22.
WolfoldsS. E.SiegelJ. (2019). Misaccounting for endogeneity: The peril of relying on the Heckman two–step method without a valid instrument. Strategic Management Journal, 40(3), 432–462.
