Home Advantage in Professional Surfing: Are Local Surfers Better? Are Local Judges More Challenging?

Home advantage has been a topic of sports economics research for decades. Although research has found proof for home advantage in many team sports, literature about its role in individual sports is less frequent. Thus, it is still being determined whether (i) home advantage is a significant factor for individual sports and whether (ii) the causes and effects of team sports are transferable and equally valid. In this paper, we provide insights into the existence of home advantage in professional surfing competitions (World Surf League). Our final dataset with 21,013 observations allows us to disentangle the influence of home surfers and judge panel constellations on athlete performances and to test for the combination of both. Even though home advantage does not seem to have a major influence, we find evidence for a potential domestic bias in both the average points scored and the chances of winning a heat per athlete.