Home Advantage in Football: Does distance play a role?

The home team advantage is one of the most interesting phenomena in sports. This research has looked at 26,468 games played between 2002 and 2014 at the four highest levels of professional English football. Individual match analysis using an ordered probit model shows that travel distance has a positive and significant effect on the home team advantage. An increase of 100 kilometers traveled distance, by the away team, increased the home team points by 0.02 points, c.p. Actual effects are six times larger than the incorporated expected effect by bookmakers, concerning travel distance. This opens up the possibility for profitable betting strategies and contradicts that the betting market functions under the efficient market hypothesis.