By Daragh O'Leary
Anyone familiar with my writing on this blog will know that I am an avid Arsenal fan. Naturally, this means quite a lot of my football posts centre around Arsenal. One example of this would be my research on the night owl effect in the Premier League.
In a previous post, I explained how watching Arsenal lose so many games away under the lights motivated me to examine whether there was a connection between late kick-offs and home advantage. Sure enough, I found some evidence to back this up empirically with econometric tests, but I found explaining the result a bit challenging because no one had ever observed it before. Accordingly, there was no real theoretical discussion in the literature on why later kick-offs may improve home advantage.
One of the possible explanations I put forward was that later kick-off times might facilitate greater levels of alcohol consumption among fans. My reasoning for this was that greater alcohol consumption could produce more hostile atmospheres for away teams. While this explanation was purely speculative, I was interested to see that Arsenal seemingly tried to harness it during their recent Champions League quarter final against Real Madrid.
In dramatic contrast to the London clubs usual revenue maximising strategy of high prices (£6.35 for a pint), Arsenal actually offered fans two-for-one beers prior to kick-off against the Spanish giants. Presumably, the reasoning behind this was to try and maximise the influence which the home fans could have on the game.
This notion of teams leveraging off the support of their fans to achieve key results is not at all uncommon in football. Jurgen Klopp once famously remarked that ‘even the hotdog sellers’ needed to be on top form ahead of a Liverpool-Manchester City title clash at Anfield. Madrid looked to try something similar for the return leg at the Bernabéu by closing the roof on their stadium.
Fortunately for Arsenal, their beer-orientated strategy seemed to outshine Madrid’s interior design choice.
Anyone familiar with my writing on this blog will know that I am an avid Arsenal fan. Naturally, this means quite a lot of my football posts centre around Arsenal. One example of this would be my research on the night owl effect in the Premier League.
In a previous post, I explained how watching Arsenal lose so many games away under the lights motivated me to examine whether there was a connection between late kick-offs and home advantage. Sure enough, I found some evidence to back this up empirically with econometric tests, but I found explaining the result a bit challenging because no one had ever observed it before. Accordingly, there was no real theoretical discussion in the literature on why later kick-offs may improve home advantage.
One of the possible explanations I put forward was that later kick-off times might facilitate greater levels of alcohol consumption among fans. My reasoning for this was that greater alcohol consumption could produce more hostile atmospheres for away teams. While this explanation was purely speculative, I was interested to see that Arsenal seemingly tried to harness it during their recent Champions League quarter final against Real Madrid.
In dramatic contrast to the London clubs usual revenue maximising strategy of high prices (£6.35 for a pint), Arsenal actually offered fans two-for-one beers prior to kick-off against the Spanish giants. Presumably, the reasoning behind this was to try and maximise the influence which the home fans could have on the game.
This notion of teams leveraging off the support of their fans to achieve key results is not at all uncommon in football. Jurgen Klopp once famously remarked that ‘even the hotdog sellers’ needed to be on top form ahead of a Liverpool-Manchester City title clash at Anfield. Madrid looked to try something similar for the return leg at the Bernabéu by closing the roof on their stadium.
Fortunately for Arsenal, their beer-orientated strategy seemed to outshine Madrid’s interior design choice.
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