Home advantage when trading the Olympics
So it’s here, never thought it would be possible but I’ll be going to the Olympics on home soil. At 08:12 this morning bells rang out across the country, which woke me up, and announced that the Olympics games has officially started.
When I was young, I was very sporty and dreamt of being in the Olympics. That never happened but I did join at Athletics club when I was older where some of the members were Olympians and we saw one of them run in the World Championships. As my career headed off down a distinctly non atheltic path. So I shifted my dream to one of going to see the Olympic’s instead, so I was estactic when London won the games.
Now it’s here I’ve been curious about whether there is actually a home advantage in the Olympics, so I went out digging for academic evidence. generally there does appear to be an advantage. To qoute: –
“When all events were combined, a significant home advantage was observed. When events were grouped according to whether they were subjectively assessed by judges, significantly greater home advantage was observed in the subjectively assessed events.”
The former seems to be based on factors such as familiartity with events, locations, travel, local weather conditions. The latter seems to be related to inflence on the judges decision. Have a read of the two interesting papers here: –
Winter Olympics – https://wlv.openrepository.com/wlv/bitstream/2436/8008/1/Nevill12.pdf
Summer Olympics – https://wlv.openrepository.com/wlv/bitstream/2436/8013/1/Nevill11.pdf
From team GB’s perspective they picked up a big haul of 47 medals from Bejing 2008, more than they have since 1908 which wasn’t really a fair comparison. Their haul of Gold medals was 19 versus just one at Atlanta in 1996. So it’s a bit of an ask to exceed that, but it’s clear to see that lottery funding starting in 1997 has obviously had a massive impact on sport. This time round of course they now have home advantage as well. You can see Team GB’s record at previous Olympics here – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_at_the_Olympics
Whether any of the individual sprots are tradable or not really depends on the volume around key events. That aside I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks of action, whether it be trading it, watching it or attending the actual event. It’s going to be great fun!
Category: Alternative markets
