This is Freakonomics Radio. Here's your host, Stephen Dupner.

So Steve Levit, it is World Cup time, World Cup soccer every four years, this year in

South Africa. What can the World Cup teach us about economics or even about human behavior?

So I think there's a lot to learn from soccer, maybe surprisingly, about economics and human

behavior. Now one of the most interesting studies that's been done looked at the home-field

advantage. And in soccer as in almost every sport, there's an enormous home-field advantage.

And it's puzzling, why is it across all these different sports that the team at home

always does better? Is it have to do with sleeping in your own bed? Is it the referees?

Is it knowing the quirks of your own field or your own court? Well in soccer, there's

a little hint as to what the source of the advantages. And that comes from two different

kinds of stadiums. Some soccer fields are built in stadiums that are expressly meant for

soccer. And in those stadiums, the people tend to be very close to the field. There are

other soccer stadiums which are also used for other things, for instance, for track and

field events. In that case, there's a big track that circles around the field. And

in the study, they were able to divide teams into two groups, one of which had a much bigger

home-field advantage than the other. The only difference that they could discern between

these two groups was something small and insignificant that you never would really associate

with home-field advantage, but turned out indeed to be quite important. In the one group

that had the big home-field advantage, they played in stadiums that were built exclusively

for soccer. The other set of teams, which had a much smaller home-field advantage, they

played in stadiums that were multi-use. Not only was it used for soccer, but they would

have a track there where they held track and field events.

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