Whether it’s due to the roaring of the crowd, reduced travel time, or shooting on familiar rims, home court advantage has always been said to play a major role in sports. There’s a reason teams in the NBA fight all season long to try and get a high seed and the home-court advantage that comes with it. But how much does a team playing at home matter in Europe? As the EuroLeague 2018-19 season gets geared up to start later this week, I thought it might be fun to take a look back at the 2017-18 season to see which teams performed most differently at home vs on the road.

I did this by taking each team’s head to head matchup against every other team, finding the point differential when they played at home vs. at the other team’s arena, and then averaging this out across all team matchups. The results are below.

Apparently, playing in Greece is not easy.

Based on home-away point differentials, the answer to the question — “Does home court make a difference in the EuroLeague?” — looks to be a resounding yes. All 16 teams finished with higher point differentials at home than they did when they were away. 

Interestingly enough, the two top teams in terms of home-court advantage — Panathinaikos Superfoods and Olympiacos — are both Greek. Perhaps there is something to the notion that fans impact the game, as the team with the largest overall home court advantage, Panathinaikos Superfoods, also happens to have the largest capacity stadium, with a seating 18,989 compared to the average EuroLeague stadium size of 12,231. 

However, while both of the top two teams in terms of home-court advantage did finish in the top four of the Euroleague, there doesn’t seem to be a huge correlation between home court advantage and likelihood of making the playoffs. Four of the eight playoff teams finished in the top half of this list, but all four were knocked out in the first round. All four teams to make it to the 2018 Euroleague Final Four, CSKA Moscow, Real Madrid, Fenerbache Dogus, and Zalgiris finished with lower than average home-court advantage point differentials. But, while their home-court advantage differentials may have been lower, that looks to be because they were also winning away games. All finished with positive away game point differentials.

So while it looks like home court advantage definitely does matter in the EuroLeague, the very best teams find ways to consistently win, whether home or away.

Fri Lavey is a writer and consultant who studied economics and statistics at Harvard University. He has previously worked as a data analyst for the NBA, the MLB, and the Philadelphia 76ers.