‘If your favourite team is moving to a plush new sports stadium, prepare for disappointment. Making the switch can have a dramatic effect on a team’s performance, a new study has found.

“It’ll probably cost you a couple of points in a season, and in some sports, that’s the difference between winning and second place,” says Richard Pollard, a statistician at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California.

Pollard studied results of professional baseball, basketball and ice hockey games in the US between 1987 and 2000. He found that teams that moved stadiums lost on average 24 per cent of their home advantage – the tendency for teams to get better results when playing at their home ground. Other sports, like American football, are likely to be similarly affected, he says.’ New Scientist