🏠 Home ground advantage, is it actually real or just something commentators say

Got into a genuinely interesting discussion with friends recently about whether home ground advantage in sports is actually a real, measurable statistical effect, or simply something commentators repeat constantly purely because it sounds plausible and makes for reasonable sounding pre match analysis regardless of whether it is genuinely backed by any actual solid evidence. One friend who genuinely follows sports statistics fairly closely pulled up some actual numbers during our conversation, and apparently there is real, measurable statistical support for the general effect existing across most major sports, though the actual specific magnitude of that advantage varies considerably more between different specific sports than I honestly originally expected going into this particular conversation myself. What genuinely surprised me most was learning that crowd noise itself, while intuitively feeling like the most obvious explanation for why home advantage would exist, is apparently not actually the primary measurable factor researchers have identified, familiarity with specific playing conditions and reduced travel fatigue for the home team apparently matter considerably more statistically than the actual crowd noise factor itself does. This makes actual sense thinking about it more carefully, a team that has genuinely practiced extensively on a specific pitch or court regularly would naturally understand its exact particular quirks better than a visiting team encountering those exact same specific conditions for the very first time that particular day. That said, my friend who actually plays competitively himself at a fairly serious level pushed back a little on the purely statistical framing, arguing that the psychological boost from genuine crowd support, even if it is statistically harder to precisely measure and isolate from other contributing factors, still genuinely matters a great deal to players actually out there competing on the field themselves in the moment. Do people here think home ground advantage is genuinely real and measurable, or mostly just something commentators repeat constantly because it sounds reasonable, and has anyone actually experienced this effect directly themselves while playing any sport competitively at any real level?

Our club ground has a noticeable slope that every visiting team complains about within the first ten minutes of arriving, meanwhile our own players adjust their stance for it almost without thinking anymore after years of practice on that exact same uneven surface week after week. Small local details like that rarely make it into any wider conversation about this whole topic at all.

Watched a visiting team struggle badly with local weather conditions once that our own side barely even noticed after years of playing in exactly that same humid climate every single season without much complaint at all. Home advantage felt less about crowd noise that particular afternoon and considerably more about simple physical adaptation that nobody else had ever trained properly for beforehand.

Played on a ground for years where our side barely lost a single match, then moved cities and lost the exact same advantage almost instantly despite the team roster staying mostly identical throughout the whole transition period. Familiarity with every uneven patch and odd bounce on your own home pitch matters more than most commentators openly give it credit for on air.