Home advantage in the Brazilian soccer championship: effect of game location and team quality

The objective of the present study was to evaluate home advantage in Brazilian soccer considering the interference of and interaction between game location and team quality in the percentage of wins and draws. Data from the Brazilian first-division soccer championship comprising a period of 10 years (1998-2007) were analyzed, for a total of 3,836 games. For club qualification the first deviation of the curve of Gauss was used in relation to the punctuation obtained. Clubs presenting apunctuation higher than this deviation were classified as high quality (HQ), clubs with an intermediate punctuation as average quality (AQ), and clubs with a lower puncutation as low quality (LQ). There was an effect of game location (p