Should the fan support be taken into consideration when it comes to placing the bets, does the current situation change much in this regard in your opinion?
Some time ago we had a
discussion here, initiated by tyKiwanuka, about what constitutes the so-called "home advantage". Several studies were also quoted and discussed in the thread. In short summary:
The fans play a big role, but they're not the only ones. Issues such as travel stress, familiar surroundings (players' cabins, the familiar field, ...) are just as important. But in my opinion, the most decisive point of the home advantage is the so-called "referee bias", which is mainly caused by the fact that referees subconsciously prefer the home team in order to avoid being targeted by the fans:
The second article
lists a lot of factors which influence home advantage. According to this article the so called "Referee Bias" is the most influental factor on home team advantage:
There is overwhelming evidence that referees decisions are biased towards the home team. Moskowitz and Wertheim (2012) found that the referee was the most influential factor on home advantage, and that home teams gained a small bias from the referee. They did make it clear that this is not done consciously, instead, the referees were affected subconsciously by the emotion of a home crowd.
So if both the support of fans is lost and the so-called "referee bias" is weakened, it is quite possible that away teams suddenly have a better chance of winning. Statistics and evaluations as soon as the season is over are certainly very interesting.
