Relative Home-Court Advantage: The Impact of Travel on Team Production When One Team is Closer than its Opponent to a Neutral Game Site

Using data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association Men's Basketball Tournament, I examine the impact of travel on team production in a setting where one team is geographically closer than its opponent to a neutral site. I hypothesize and find that the closer team, or relative home team, has a relative home-court advantage that helps it to out-produce its opponent. When the relative home team travels a much shorter distance than its opponent to a neutral site, binary logistic and ordinary least squares regressions indicate a positive relationship between relative home-court advantage and, respectfully, winning and margin of victory. Copyright (C) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.