--- title: "Home Field Advantage, Measured: 11,581 US League Games and 13,327 Soccer Matches on Polymarket" canonical: "https://0xinsider.com/research/home-field-advantage-polymarket" datePublished: "2026-09-14" dateModified: "2026-09-14" description: "Home teams won 55.6% of NBA games, 54.4% in the NHL, 53.7% in MLB and 53.7% in the NFL on Polymarket; soccer home sides won 43.6%. Large bets on home and away sides both came in within a point of the price." --- # Home Field Advantage, Measured: 11,581 US League Games and 13,327 Soccer Matches on Polymarket Last updated: 2026-09-14 Canonical: https://0xinsider.com/research/home-field-advantage-polymarket Every Polymarket game settles to a result, and the league schedule says which team was at home, so home advantage is a count. Across 11,581 US league games, home teams won 55.6% in the NBA, 54.4% in the NHL, 54.9% in the WNBA, 53.7% in MLB and 53.7% in the NFL, where the interval still includes an even split. College football home teams won 64.4%. In 13,327 club soccer matches, the home side won 43.6%, the away side 30.2% and 26.2% were drawn. The price already knows: 104,445 large bets on home and away sides from April 2 both came in within a point of what they paid. ## How Polymarket marks the home team Polymarket usually titles a US league game with the away team first: "Bills vs. Texans" is the Bills at the Texans. Matched against ESPN's schedule, 239 of 12,297 settled NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, WNBA and college football games listed the home team first, 110 of them NFL games in 2024 and 109 MLB games, most in April 2025. So this study takes the home team from ESPN's schedule for every US game, whichever team Polymarket named first. Soccer runs the other way. A Polymarket soccer match is three markets, and the draw market names the home team first: "Will Manchester United FC vs. Manchester City FC end in a draw?" is Manchester United at home. On a sample of 200 matches across ten competitions, the event data agreed 200 times. The script, the sample and its output are published with the study. With the home team identified, how often it wins is a count of settled results, and whether bettors price it correctly is a comparison of what they paid with how often their side won. The settlement matched ESPN's final score on 12,190 of the 12,203 games ESPN lists; most of the few misses paired a market with a neighbouring game of the same series, and they are left out. ## 11,581 US league games and 13,327 club soccer matches The US count takes one full-game moneyline per game from each league's first game on record to September 13, 2026: 2,583 NBA games, 4,521 MLB, 2,352 NHL, 985 college football, 566 NFL and 574 WNBA. Left out: preseason and spring training games, All-Star and summer league exhibitions, games ESPN marks as played at a neutral site, a second Polymarket market for the same game, and any game whose market settled 50-50, which is how an NFL tie settles. The soccer count takes matches with all three result markets settled, from November 21, 2025: 13,327 club matches, every one of which resolved exactly one Yes. National-team matches, club friendlies and one-match super cups are left out by the competition Polymarket files them under, because a friendly or a super cup is often played away from either team's home ground. The pricing half uses the large-trade alerts from April 2, 2026, the first day the alert table's outcome labels are trustworthy (0xinsider.com/research/favorite-longshot-bias-polymarket-sports documents why): 104,445 buys of $1,000 or more on US moneylines and on soccer team-to-win markets, $2.42 billion in stakes across 5,071 markets. Rates carry plain binomial half-widths; pricing intervals resample markets. ## Home teams won 54% to 56% of pro games In the NBA, home teams won 55.6% of 2,583 games, with a half-width of 1.92 points. The NHL came in at 54.4%, the WNBA at 54.9%, MLB at 53.7% over 4,521 games and the NFL at 53.7%. Read those as a few points above an even split, not as a large edge. A home team at 54% wins about eight games in fifteen. The rates held from year to year: MLB came in at 54.1% in 2025 and 53.2% so far in 2026, the NBA between 55.3% and 56.3% in each calendar year, the NHL between 52.6% and 55.5%. ## The NFL and MLB have the smallest home edges NFL home teams won 53.7% of 566 games from September 6, 2024, and the half-width is 4.11 points, so the interval runs from 49.6% to 57.8% and includes an even split. By calendar year it was 52.2% over 251 games in 2024 and 54.0% over 276 in 2025. An NFL season is 272 regular-season games, so no single season settles the question, and this sample spans parts of three. MLB's home teams came in at the same 53.7% over 4,521 games, eight times the sample, with a half-width of 1.45 points, so baseball's small home edge is the better-measured one. What the data supports for the NFL is that home field was worth a few points over this stretch, and possibly nothing. ## College football home teams win nearly two in three College football home teams won 64.4% of 985 games, the largest home rate here by nearly nine points. It splits by date: 58.2% over 660 games in 2025, and 76.9% over the 325 games of 2026 so far. The 2026 games are only the opening weeks of a season, when many games pair a major program at home with a smaller visitor, so that figure is not a season rate, and this data does not separate conference games from the rest. Bowl games and other neutral-site games are left out. Take the 2025 rate as the steadier number and the early-season rate as a partial one. ## Club soccer: home 43.6%, draw 26.2%, away 30.2% In 13,327 club matches, the home side won 43.6% of the time, with a half-width of 0.84 points, the away side 30.2% and 26.2% ended level. The home side wins about 13 matches in a hundred more often than the away side. Because a soccer match can be drawn, the home rate is not comparable with the US leagues directly. Among matches with a winner, the home side won about 59% of the time, a larger edge than any US pro league shows. ## Home advantage by soccer competition Twenty-six competitions have 200 or more complete matches. Home sides won most often in Peru's Liga 1, 51.7%, the Champions League, 50.5%, and La Liga, 49.1%. They won least often in the Japan J2 League, 35.1% with away sides winning just as often, and in the Egyptian league and the Eredivisie, both near 37%. The Premier League sits low at 37.5% over 275 matches, with 32.4% drawn. Each competition's home rate carries a half-width of five to seven points, so most of these differences are inside the noise; the table below lists every competition with its draws and away wins. ## The price already knows about home advantage Large buyers of the home side came in 0.28 points behind the price over 57,130 buys, with a market-resampled interval from minus 3.65 to plus 3.06. Buyers of the away side came in 0.63 behind over 47,315, from minus 4.15 to plus 2.80. Both sides paid about what their chances were worth. MLB, with the most markets, is the clearest: home buyers paid 57.8 cents and won 57.5% of the time, away buyers paid 53.9 cents and won 53.8%, each within about a third of a point. Soccer's away side came in 2.69 points behind, inside an interval fifteen points wide. The NBA and NHL samples come from the final regular-season weeks and the playoffs, about 200 markets each, and football buys are too few to read. So the few points of home advantage are already in the price. A bettor who adds a home bonus on top of a Polymarket price is counting it twice. ## Home underdogs and away favorites Split by price, home underdogs, home sides bought under 50 cents, came in 0.95 points ahead over 12,933 buys and plus 8.5% on the dollar. Away favorites came in 1.98 points behind over 26,158 buys and minus 5.3% on the dollar. That is the direction the betting folklore about home underdogs points, and none of it clears zero: the home underdog interval runs from minus 3.65 to plus 5.58 and the away favorite interval from minus 6.23 to plus 2.20. ## What this study does not show It does not say why teams win at home, whether travel, rest, crowds or officiating; it counts results. For US games the home team and the venue are ESPN's; soccer's home team is the one Polymarket's draw market names first, and soccer matches at a neutral venue are not separated out. The pricing half comes from particular stretches: MLB from April to mid-September, the NBA and NHL from their final regular-season weeks and playoffs, the WNBA season, and club soccer. NFL and college football buys number 73 and 126, too few to read, so the NFL pricing question waits for this season. Markets that settled on Polymarket but have no recorded result in 0xinsider's database are not counted; for soccer result markets since June that is about 2% of closed markets. Every position is scored as held to settlement at the buyer's price, before fees. ## What it means for a bettor Home advantage is real in every league measured here and small in every pro league: four to six points above an even split in the US, and a larger share of decided matches in soccer. It is also priced. Large bettors on both sides paid about what their chances were worth, so the home team is not a bet in itself. Use the rates to check a price, not to adjust one. An NBA home team at 50 cents against an equal opponent is priced as if home court were worth nothing, which the data says is wrong. A home team priced at 55 cents in the same game already carries the edge. ## How to use home advantage on 0xinsider Every game on the league boards, 0xinsider.com/sports/nfl, 0xinsider.com/sports/nba, 0xinsider.com/sports/mlb, 0xinsider.com/sports/nhl, 0xinsider.com/sports/wnba, 0xinsider.com/sports/college-football and 0xinsider.com/sports/soccer, lists both teams with their Polymarket prices. The event page's Markets section adds the spreads, totals and props, and its Top holders tab lists the wallets holding each side with the grade each has earned. The whale alerts feed at 0xinsider.com/whale-alerts shows every large trade as it fills, marked BUY or SELL, with the wallet's grade. The guides at 0xinsider.com/learn/how-to-bet-on-nfl-polymarket and 0xinsider.com/learn/how-to-bet-on-mlb-polymarket cover the NFL and MLB markets game by game, and 0xinsider.com/research/point-spreads-polymarket covers spreads. ## Correction to the US home rates On September 14, 2026, the day after publication, we matched every US game in the study to ESPN's schedule and recounted. The first version read the second-named team of every US game as the home team and counted every settled game, which put preseason games, spring training, All-Star and summer league exhibitions, neutral-site games and 39 duplicate markets in the sample, and it swapped the home and away teams in 239 games. The recount moved every US league rate by less than two points and left each conclusion in place except one: the NFL's home edge is not the smallest on its own, MLB's is the same. The first version had NFL home teams at 52.1% of 687 games and MLB at 53.4% of 4,778; the pricing half barely moved, because the buys it counts start in April 2026, after the titles changed. The query, the ESPN match and the recount scripts are published beside the original run. ## How to check it yourself The soccer figures come from one read-only run of a set of queries against the production database at 21:44 UTC on September 13, 2026; the US figures and the pricing come from the recount on September 14, 2026, a read-only export matched game by game to ESPN's public schedule. The query text, the raw output, the ESPN match, the recount and pricing scripts with their outputs, the market-level export, the home-team check against Polymarket's event data and the competition list are public at github.com/0xinsider/research, under polymarket-sports-markets, in the files whose names carry the word home. The US universe is one settled full-game moneyline per regular-season, postseason or play-in game in the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, WNBA and college football, at the home team's venue on ESPN's schedule. The soccer universe is club matches with the draw market and both team-to-win markets settled. The pricing universe is every large-trade alert for a Polymarket buy on those markets, settled after the trade, at 2 to 98 cents, from April 2 to September 13, 2026. Expect the counts to grow, the NFL most of all as its season runs. The pro-league home rates should hold within their half-widths. ## FAQ ### What percentage of home teams win in the NFL? 53.7% of 566 NFL regular-season and playoff games settled on Polymarket from September 6, 2024 to September 13, 2026, neutral-site games left out, with a binomial half-width of 4.11 points, so the interval includes an even split. It was 52.2% in 2024 and 54.0% in 2025. ### How much is home court advantage worth in the NBA? NBA home teams won 55.6% of 2,583 games settled on Polymarket from April 20, 2024, with a half-width of 1.92 points: between five and six points above an even split. ### How often does the home team win in soccer? In 13,327 club soccer matches settled on Polymarket from November 21, 2025, the home side won 43.6%, the away side 30.2% and 26.2% were drawn. In the Premier League the home side won 37.5% of 275 matches. ### Does home field advantage matter in baseball? A little. MLB home teams won 53.7% of 4,521 games settled on Polymarket, with a half-width of 1.45 points: 54.1% in 2025 and 53.2% in 2026 so far. ### Should you bet on home teams? Not for being at home. From April 2 to September 13, 2026, large Polymarket bets on home sides came in 0.28 points behind their price and bets on away sides 0.63 behind, both with intervals that include zero. Home advantage is already in the price.