Whether you’re defending your house or entering enemy territory, athletes — and fans — are very protective of where they play. Because of this, many sports can have a home-court advantage — where a team does better in home games than away ones.
But what role does playing home or away actually have in winning games? And does it actually help when it matters the most?
For some sports in U Sports — like volleyball, basketball and soccer — the university hosting the national championship gets an automatic spot in the tournament. Even if they place last in conference play, they still get a shot at the national title.
The Ubyssey broke down some of the data of every men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball and soccer championship until the 2023/24 season to see if the home-court advantage exists.
By and large, the data says it doesn’t.
Across the 6 championship tournaments, only 40 out of 296 hosting teams have captured the gold medal — which works out to 13.5 per cent.
Nearly half of those have occurred in the past 20 years. Prior to 2005, host teams across the 3 sports won 11.83 per cent of the time. Post-2005, that statistic is up to 16.36 per cent. However, soccer strongly pulls this statistic, with over 25 per cent of championships being won by the hosts. Both the basketball and volleyball leagues have only had one host win in the past 10 years (Laval men’s basketball in 2024 and UBC women’s volleyball in 2023).
Soccer additionally has the highest proportion of host-won championships, at 15.9 per cent of hosts winning, then volleyball at 13.5 and lastly basketball at only 7.4.
However, soccer championships only started in 1985 and 1987 for men and women respectively, while basketball and volleyball have been occurring since the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The over 15-year gap in data could explain why soccer seems to benefit from this home-court advantage.
There is a breakdown by gender as well. Men’s host teams have won 14.84 per cent of championships while women’s host teams sit at 12.06 per cent.
When broken down by sport, male soccer and basketball teams have done better than their female counterparts by upwards of 10 per cent, but women’s volleyball have outcompeted the men by roughly 6 per cent.
The familiarity of a home court might not be the only thing going for a team either — their season performance also plays a role.
Host spots, or berths, are announced anywhere from two to four years in advance by U Sports. Rosters also turn over every year, never guaranteeing the team’s best year will be the year they have an automatic spot.
UBC particularly has had good luck when hosting — 60 per cent (9/15) of UBC-hosted championships have resulted in national banners.
Further, in both sports where UBC has the highest percentage of winning championships on home turf — men’s soccer and women’s volleyball — UBC also holds the highest number of total championships.
A 2024 study on the NBA found that more successful teams had a higher home win percentage over teams lower in the standings, citing psychological and logistical benefits to being on a familiar court.
Prior to the 1994 men’s soccer championships, UBC was already in a very good position to win. They had a 9–0–1 regular season record and won the conference with a 5–1 win over the University of Alberta. Two of the three top conference goal scorers were from UBC, and T-Bird goalie Pat Onstad had a stellar year with zero goals against. While they played on home turf, the result would have been in UBC’s favour anywhere else too.
However, that isn’t always the case. In 2023, the UBC women’s volleyball team was knocked out in the opening Canada West playoff round, placing eighth-seed by their host berth alone. They were not favoured to win.
But they managed to sneak a win in the quarterfinals, then the semifinals and the final, for a national championship no one really saw coming. For some players, playing on home court really was the difference-maker.
“The crowd here was amazing,” said Brynn Pasin after the team’s quarterfinal upset. “Thankfully we’re on home turf — that helped so much.”
At the end of the day, home court is just one of many variables that go into how a team performs on a certain day —and if history is indication, it’s neither here nor there.
— With files from Tanay Mahendru
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