The last time the Southeast Asian Games (SEAG or SEA Games) was held in the Philippines, our country won its first-ever overall title. That was in 2005, our third time to host the regional multisport event.
In the 1991 SEAG, our second time as host, the Philippines had a bumper harvest of 91 gold medals and we lost by just one gold to overall winner Indonesia.
There is no doubt that playing at home increases the chances of winning for home teams. Playing in front of their fellow Filipinos can be everything for our athletes. But this assumes the home crowd will turn out in droves to support them as they compete. This we encourage Filipinos to do as we host the 30th Southeast Asian Games from November 30 to December 11.
We hope the government and our local organizers would offer opportunities for the full participation and support of the home crowd.
Let us give our athletes our all-out support as they push their limits, try to break records, set new standards and do our country proud.
How much of a difference can playing at home really make? Some researchers, mathematicians and scientists have actually tried to answer this question through studies.
The pioneers were researchers B. Schwartz and S.F. Barsky, who in 1977 calculated the home advantage for different American sports. Their study revealed that for ice hockey and basketball, for example, 64 percent of games were won at home, and for American football, home advantage accounted for 60 percent of the wins.
There was a flurry of studies that followed after their initial report. Soccer reportedly has one of the biggest advantages of any sport, with some studies estimating a 69 percent chance of winning for home teams.
Courts and venue familiarity and crowd support are the most cited reasons in explaining the home advantage.
Anybody who has played in a hostile barrio or barangay (in Filipino, we call it dayo) would know how much of a factor even a hundred cheering or jeering supporters can make, so how much more if we’re talking of thousands?
Noisy crowds can boost the energy of the home team, take their opponents off their game and even influence the referee or the judges.
In the SEA Games, host countries also do well because of the aforementioned factors, and the advantage of choosing the sport events where the host is good at. For instance, in the last staging of the SEAG in 2017, Malaysia was overall champion, winning 145 of a total of 404 gold medals.
In an ABS-CBN news report, Datuk Sieh Kok Chi, former secretary of the Olympic Council of Malaysia, said he sees the Philippines using the same strategy used by Malaysia in 2017 to win the SEAG title.
“The Philippines will naturally be the champion, with Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore fighting for second to sixth positions,” he said in his Facebook post that was quoted in the ABS-CBN story.
He said Malaysia had certain advantages as host in 2017, which were maximized by the country’s organizing committee. “For example, the Diving events were increased from the normal eight events to 13, track cycling events were increased from the normal eight events to 13 and Pencak Silat events were increased from the normal 14 events to 20 events. In addition, the events of a number of sports, such as boxing, fencing, judo, weightlifting, were reduced by half.”
Chi said the Philippine SEA Games Organizing Committee is also maximizing the home advantage in the same manner.
A total of 530 events across 56 sports will comprise this year’s SEAG, a considerable increase from the 2017 edition staged in Malaysia, which only had 404 events in 38 sports. It would be a nice Christmas, indeed, for Filipinos to be able to relive the glorious times we hosted the SEA Games and did well.
A splendid performance in the medal count in this 30th SEA Games, if not an overall victory, would do well for our people as they prepare for Christmas. It is, after all, a time for joy, and in a nation hungry for things to be joyous about, we need all the help we can get, all the reasons we can find to celebrate.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano