When the US National Basketball Association (NBA) was forced to pause the season due to Covid-19 on March 11 last year, the fans were naturally devastated. When the season resumed five months later, with the top 22 teams bubbled together and playing every game in Orlando, Florida, this was great news for the sport, and the fans — and a pair of US researchers. Andrew McHill at Oregon Health and Science University and Evan Chinoy at Leidos Inc, in San Diego, realised that the restart provided a perfect natural experiment to explore the effects of travel on play. Their study, published in Scientific Reports, reveals some insights into causes of the well-documented sporting home-side advantage.

The “home-court” advantage, as it’s known in basketball, is apparent in the results tables: teams win more often at home than away. In normal circumstances, it’s hard, though, to disentangle all the possible variables that might underlie it. These include home-crowd noise, the discomfort of air travel, and time zone changes. In regular seasons, NBA teams do regularly travel long distances across the US, through one, two or even three time zones, to play away games. Many NBA players report resulting sleep loss and fatigue, and harmful effects on their performance, recovery and mood, the researchers note. Disruption to circadian rhythms has been considered the mostly likely culprit, though the rigours of travel and sleeping away from home have also been highlighted as potentially play a role.

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