Home Field Advantage?

For the first time since 1936, the NFL has moved the location of a playoff game. Because of the horrific wildfires in Los Angeles, the playoff game between the Minnesota Vikings and Los Angeles Rams is being relocated to Arizona. From the video and images coming from Los Angeles, it seems there was no option but to move the game. This means the Rams will lose their home field advantage.

An NFL playoff game has not been moved since 1936. That year the playoff game was moved from Boston to New York due to poor ticket sales. The move is bad news for the Los Angeles Rams who went from a slight underdog at +1 to a modest underdog at +2.5. But exactly how bad is the change for the Rams? The point spread change might seem trivial to the average fan, but it typically requires in the tens of thousands to move a line on an NFL game by a point. There are multiple factors that can influence a change in an NFL point spread, but the most common is an influx of bets on one team leaving the sportsbook at more risk. Sportsbooks establish and move lines to encourage an equal amount of bets on each team, thus ensuring a profit. If you are considering a bet on this weekend’s matchups, consider a review of the best sportsbooks

If you are a Ram’s fan, the change in venue is unwelcome news. Teams play all season for the coveted home-field advantage. The Rams earned home field against the Vikings, despite winning four fewer games than Minnesota, by virtue of winning their division – the NFC West. The perceived likelihood of the Rams winning on Monday just decreased more than 200% if we can infer the line change from +1 to +2.5 equates to how much less likely the Rams are to win the game. But can we infer that logically from the change in point spread?

Over the last three years, home teams have gone 14-4 in the opening week of the NFL playoffs.  That is almost 78%. In a generic sense, according to the latest trend, the fires in Los Angeles eliminated a 78% advantage for the Rams. In the regular season, the home team wins about 57% of the time in the NFL. While that is a decided advantage, it’s probably lower than most fans would estimate it to be. In the playoffs the home team wins at a 60% clip. Still, this is a lower percentage than the average NFL fan might expect. If we look at the winning percentages for home teams across the major sports, the results may come as a surprise for most sports fans.

Very few fans would expect that home teams in the NFL have the second lowest win percentage among the major sports.

If we review the numbers, we can conclude that the Rams didn’t lose as much as many fans may assume that did when the NFL moved the game out of Los Angeles. While the home field advantage in the playoffs has been trending higher over the last three years than it has historically, things can be expected to fall back in line with the all-time trend. The Rams can complain about the move all they want. There was little else the NFL could do considering current events and the focus that must be given to safety. The game wasn’t moved to Minnesota. Arizona is still a much easier trip for Ram fans than it is for Viking fans. In addition, the line was moved in anticipation of what sportsbooks expect fans to believe about the game, not what is mathematically true about home field advantage in the NFL. It will be hard in the end to quantify exactly what the change in venue meant to the outcome of the game on Monday. What we can say definitively is the Rams have no excuse if they lose.