Crowds and Managerial Decisions in European Football Leagues

This paper examines the relationship between the size of crowds and substitution decisions made by managers in the top five European football leagues between 2017 and 2021. While the size of the crowd is unrelated to substitutions made by managers of the home team, the data show that managers of the away team make more defensive substitutions when they are playing against a team with a large crowd in its stadium. The result emerges both in comparing games with fans to ghost games during the pandemic and in comparing games with many fans to games with few fans in the pre-pandemic era. The conclusion that away managers are more defensive in their choices in the presence of large crowds is consistent with the theory that fans put social pressure on managers and that negative social pressure induces fear, which leads to pessimism and risk-averse decisions.