Want your team to win at home? Start singing!

IF YOU’RE planning to sing your heart out at a match this weekend, you might just want to do it a little louder.

That’s because supportive fans really do give their team the edge, a study found.

Researchers were able to prove the longheld perception that a team is more likely to win when playing at home than away. But it was not a case of home side players being familiar with the ground, or the away players being tired from travelling.

Instead, they found it was due to the enthusiasm of a large crowd of supporters.

At home matches, a team’s fans are likely to greatly outnumber those of the away side. This has a ‘significant and sizable effect’ on the home team’s likelihood of winning – increasing the odds by up to 22.8 percentage points, the researchers found.

The academics from Texas A&M International University and Western Illinois University focused on two basketball teams that use the same stadium – the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers.

When they play each other, one side is designated as visitors and the other as the home team. The team deemed to be playing at home gets more fans, because of season tickets which guarantee seats for home games – and won significantly more games. The researchers wrote that ‘essentially the entire home advantage is attributable to the crowd effect’.