Live sports kept many of us going with a semblance of normality over the COVID-19 pandemic but the events we watched were held under far from normal conditions. In the English Premier League, after a 3 month break, the 2019/20 season was resumed with no fans in attendance, something that remained in place until the final round of the 2020/21 season.
Early on in the 2020/21 season it became clear that home advantage was not as strong as previous seasons, resulting in an increased number of home wins. Here I present an analysis of the teams that benefited the most from this swing and some preliminary examination of the characteristics of those teams.
Looking at those teams for which we have a good number of seasons prior to 2019/20 to average, the trend of increased away/home win ratios in the 2020/21 season is clear. There is a group of teams (Fulham, Newcastle, Everton), with previously relatively poorer away records that showed particularly large increases in this ratios. This may point to a ceiling effect for the better performing teams.
Of course, this analysis can't tell us about the actual impact of fans on teams' performance, perhaps this effect is stronger for teams that perform better on average. It's hard to imagine how one might being to quantify this impact, perhaps it is best considered part of the magic of football.