Will Empty Bleachers Change the Psychology of Sports ?
When German and US soccer kick off this summer, there will be no crowds. That might squelch the home-field advantage—and the emotion that drives players.
“The situation is very strange and completely new for everyone involved,” says Alex Feuerherdt, a Cologne-based sports journalist, referee trainer, coach, and host of the podcast Rules of the Game. “I can imagine that both players and referees are insecure and inhibited, not only because there are no spectators, but also because of the hygiene rules. Maybe everyone will be more restrained.” Never before have sports teams played an entire season without fans, and that will make this summer a fascinating time for the people who study sports and how psychology influences athletic performance. In the few instances in which fans were excluded from the stadiums in the past, researchers found fewer penalties issued by referees and less of an advantage for the home team.
Over the years, researchers have documented a home-field advantage in basketball, football, and baseball.
These results are due mainly to the fact that away teams have to deal with the fatigue of travel, the uncertainties of playing on an unfamiliar field and using a different locker room, and also the effects of crowd noise on referees, which tends to be associated with more fouls against visiting teams.
Mikel Priks, an economics professor at Stockholm University, reviewed 21 Italian soccer games that were played before empty seats back in 2007. (Italian soccer officials had banned fans from the games after violence erupted in Sicily between supporters of competing teams, resulting in the death of a police officer.) Pitkin found that without the boos, the refs got a bit of a breather. They issued equal numbers of fouls to both teams, according to his study published in the journal Economics Letters. “It was a natural experiment,” says Pitkin. "What we found was that there was an effect on the number of fouls, yellow cards, and red cards, and we concluded that referees were affected, rather than the players."
See how sports stadiums have transformed to help pandemic relief efforts
Fields that stood empty have rapidly been converted into testing centers, field hospitals, and morgues.
NOT LONG AGO, we'd line up at stadium gates eager and excited, decked out in fan gear and ready to tailgate. If we felt any anxiety, it was the healthy kind that breathes life into sports. We always knew, deep in our hearts, the stakes weren't life-or-death.
The anxiety is different now. Many stadiums and sports fields around the world are converted to different purposes. They are field hospitals or coronavirus test sites. Some shelter the homeless. Others are used to feed the hungry. Some are morgues.
But their concrete facades, raised hoops, hardwood floors and green grass remind us of what we had, and of the promise of what's waiting just on the other side of this pandemic.
These are our playing fields.
North America for the first time in North American history, a state of emergency has simultaneously been declared in all Canadian provinces, all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, and nearly all U.S. territories. Governors across America have mobilized National Guard units to convert field houses, stadiums, arenas and parking lots. The sites include 10 NFL stadiums, along with racetracks and more than three dozen other facilities normally used for basketball, hockey, baseball and tennis, including the site of the US Open, above. They all have new functions now, as the death toll surpassed 50,000 in April. (Discover the 2,500-year history of stadiums in 10 drawings.)
Like all of her fellow citizen soldiers, Adams has a story about why she volunteered for the National Guard. After a successful basketball career at Glenville State College in West Virginia, she had dreams of the WNBA. Until she missed the final cut for the Los Angeles Sparks. "That hurt," she says. "I just had to pick up the pieces and just find another avenue. And I did."
In the Guard, she found a way to be a basketball coach in her civilian life and a premier athlete in her military uniform. She's on the U.S. Army women's team that won gold against teams from the other military branches, and last October she was one of 12 players chosen to represent America in the Military World Games in Wuhan, China. Weeks after that team took bronze, word came that a new virus had emerged.
Now, instead of getting ready for another season, Adams is among the Guard members staffing a coronavirus testing site outside Fedex that screened more than 800 people over three weeks. "A month from now I would have been at [basketball] training camp," she says. "But at the same time, we understand that this is bigger than us. We're sacrificing everything just to make sure everyone is OK." —Tisha Thompson
This Basketball Bubble Is Already Operational. Here’s What It’s Like.
With his Ludwigsburg Giants off to a 3-0 start in Germany’s relaunched basketball Bundesliga, Coach John Patrick and his sons, Johannes and Jacob, seized their off day Saturday by heading to the front desk of the league’s hotel and renting bicycles for 5 euros each.
Since the Patricks were exiting the B.B.L. bubble for an hourlong father-and-sons ride, they had to agree to stay in a group of three or fewer and follow a strict set of rules, including wearing masks; steering clear of public bathrooms, shops and restaurants; and, most of all, completely avoiding human interaction outside the hotel. Players, coaches and team staffers are essentially regulated by only the honor system in the rare instances they leave the Leonardo Royal hotel, but it appears that the league’s directives are working well enough.
Florian Kainzinger, the B.B.L.’s new independent head of hygiene, announced that all 250 people staying at the hotel in Munich had tested negative for the coronavirus through the first week of the tournament, which began June 6. The 10-team, 36-game competition runs through June 28.
“We’d be thrown out of the tournament if we did any of that,” John Patrick said in a telephone interview about violating the B.B.L.’s rules for individuals who leave the hotel. “So I don’t think anyone thinks about it.”
Johannes, 18, and Jacob, 16, are with their American father in the B.B.L. bubble only because Ludwigsburg had to call them up from the youth team. Two key Americans on the roster, Khadeen Carrington and Tanner Leissner, did not return to Germany when the league started up again after the coronavirus pandemic had shut down play for more than two months.
At a maximum of 250 occupants — including referees, league officials and 22-person traveling parties for each of the 10 teams — the Munich bubble is only one-sixth as large as the 1,600-strong N.B.A. version set to convene next month at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida to complete the 2019-20 season.
