By David Butler
Last week my paper (with Robbie Butler and Carl Singleton) saw the light of day in the Journal of Economic Psychology. It can be read here. In it we ask whether facing partisan audiences affects the execution of a skilled task. Our setting is penalty shootouts in the high-stakes environment of elite professional football. Since 17/18 prior to a shootout the referee tosses the coin to pick which end the kicks will be taken. One set of fans erupts, and a pundit usually declares that the team shooting towards its own supporters now has the edge. Sometimes this is deemed 'unfair'.
The ideas are intuitive. Shoot towards a wall of your own supporters and you feel their encouragement... or maybe you feel extra stress and could choke? Shoot towards the away end and you face jeering, waving arms, banners and a barrage designed to put you off but maybe less pressure from expectant fans? But is it actually true? Are effects running any way? The short answer is that we found no evidence for either.
We watched the footage and built a dataset of 1,322 penalties from 134 shootouts in the later rounds of the two big English cup competitions (the FA Cup and the EFL (League) Cup) across every season from 1992/93 to 2025/26. For each shootout we went through archive video, mostly on YouTube, and coded by hand whether the takers were facing their own supporters or the opposition's. Importantly, this is directly observed, not assumed. Almost without exception, fans behind the goal try to distract opposition takers and goalkeepers with noise (and movement for takers), then fall quiet or supportive when their own player steps up. The headline result is a null one however. We find no statistically significant evidence that having supportive or hostile fans behind the goal changes the probability of scoring or of missing.
None of this means the authorities should scrap the coin toss. Even if it does not affect takers, it keeps the process visibly fair and heads off accusations of bias, which is worth something. And is the null effect of fans too surprising? Arguably not - these players are elite footballers who are accustomed to such taunts and distractions. Of course, it is difficult to generalise to other settings, and we do note some small effects, but it is optimistic to think that elite pros seem to be able to ignore the noise.
Last week my paper (with Robbie Butler and Carl Singleton) saw the light of day in the Journal of Economic Psychology. It can be read here. In it we ask whether facing partisan audiences affects the execution of a skilled task. Our setting is penalty shootouts in the high-stakes environment of elite professional football. Since 17/18 prior to a shootout the referee tosses the coin to pick which end the kicks will be taken. One set of fans erupts, and a pundit usually declares that the team shooting towards its own supporters now has the edge. Sometimes this is deemed 'unfair'.
The ideas are intuitive. Shoot towards a wall of your own supporters and you feel their encouragement... or maybe you feel extra stress and could choke? Shoot towards the away end and you face jeering, waving arms, banners and a barrage designed to put you off but maybe less pressure from expectant fans? But is it actually true? Are effects running any way? The short answer is that we found no evidence for either.
We watched the footage and built a dataset of 1,322 penalties from 134 shootouts in the later rounds of the two big English cup competitions (the FA Cup and the EFL (League) Cup) across every season from 1992/93 to 2025/26. For each shootout we went through archive video, mostly on YouTube, and coded by hand whether the takers were facing their own supporters or the opposition's. Importantly, this is directly observed, not assumed. Almost without exception, fans behind the goal try to distract opposition takers and goalkeepers with noise (and movement for takers), then fall quiet or supportive when their own player steps up. The headline result is a null one however. We find no statistically significant evidence that having supportive or hostile fans behind the goal changes the probability of scoring or of missing.
None of this means the authorities should scrap the coin toss. Even if it does not affect takers, it keeps the process visibly fair and heads off accusations of bias, which is worth something. And is the null effect of fans too surprising? Arguably not - these players are elite footballers who are accustomed to such taunts and distractions. Of course, it is difficult to generalise to other settings, and we do note some small effects, but it is optimistic to think that elite pros seem to be able to ignore the noise.
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