Comparison of home advantage in men’s and women’s Portuguese roller hockey league

The purpose of this study was to quantify the home advantage in both men’s and women’s Portuguese professional division roller hockey leagues comparing the results obtained according to the sex of participants. The sample was composed of 2,080 roller hockey games (n = 1,632 in First men’s division; and n = 448 in First women’s division) between the 2009–2010 and 2016–17 seasons. Goals scored and received were also analysed when teams play at home. The results showed the existence of home advantage in both men’s and women’s leagues. Home advantage values were higher than 50% in both leagues, with significantly higher values in the male league (60.88% compared to 54.33%). Moreover, the results indicated that teams score a higher percentage of goals when playing at home with non-significant differences between sexes. Regarding the number of goals scored per match, the results showed a significant difference between the male and female divisions, with higher values for men’s leagues. The results in relation to sex of participants are consistent with previous studies in other sports like football or water polo. The analysis of the home advantage could be useful to help roller hockey coaches to design alignments for each match and to plan the training loads according to match location.