Home Field Advantage – The Power of an audience

So I had the great delight in attending the Dreamhack Malmo Masters this past weekend and I have to say, once again, Dreamhack pulled out all the stops. The arena itself was incredible, with exceptional commentary and analysis by the respective broadcasters, top plays by the teams involved and the audience… WOW. What to say other than the fact that the Swedish (and I presume also Danish) audience really blew the roof off the Malmo arena.

The venue was tingling with excitement and anticipation and the calls from the audience, the chants were simply awe inspiring.

Curiously, following the amazing victory by Ninjas In Pyjamas, I saw several Tweets as well as comments by analysts such as Duncan ‘Thorin’ Shields and ‘Semmler’ regarding the “surprise victory” by NIP after over 18 months away from the winners podium.

The comments got me to evaluate the tournament as a whole and the nature of NIP doing so well in Sweden. Because on paper they were viewed as somewhat of the underdogs among the likes of Luminosity and also NaVi - particularly in the final days when 'Guardian' returned to the NaVi line-up.

There is no doubt the return of Pyth meant for a stronger line up than we saw in the Major just a fortnight before. However, there was something that changed in NIP. A similar thing, an entity if you will, was clear in Godsent who also surprised the field with their performance and their success of making it to the semi-finals.

Was it the presence of the home crowd?

Kimberley ?hage from Dreamhack was helping out the fans in the Creativity Zone outside of the main hall, helping people with Banners, Signs and face painting and walking around the Arena it was clear to see that Sweden is proud of NIP. The NIP jerseys (available in most gaming shops, like a Man Utd. jersey in a sport shop) were everywhere, but even those not totting the latest in lines from NIP were sporting the four pronged shuriken styled design of the NIP logo.

The chants for NIP (and Godsent the other Swedish team) were so loud, the commentators took pause to let the cheers die down as they couldn’t be heard over the immense PA system and the games, particularly after the come backs. (For those that didn’t see, NIP came back from disadvantages 4 games on the trot on their route to the winner’s trophy.)

In researching this article I looked into some research papers on the notion of home field advantage, a statistic that’s been proven across many traditional sports, with playing at home attributed to a significantly higher percentage of wins across all sports. Professor Neave in his 2003 paper discussed the considerable adrenaline and testosterone spikes that you get when knowing that a crowd is cheering for you, and perhaps it was this added cheer that did spur on the teams to their monumental performances.

Speaking to players from both Astralis and G2 at the event we discussed the crowd and despite the Sound Proof Boxes and Expensive Headsets (insert team sponsorship deal here) both teams commented on the fact that the crowd could be heard clearly and that the cheers after the massive plays spurred them on to play better.

Perhaps NIP had trained harder and longer.

Perhaps the return of Jacob ‘Pyth’ Mourujarvi did mean a lot.

Perhaps 'Threat' being allowed to concentrate on coaching instead of fragging boosted them.

Perhaps 'Heaton' corralled his players by reminding them of what NIP used to do and got 'Forest', 'Friberg', 'GetRight' and 'Xizt' back in that mind set…

OR

Perhaps taking on the Swedes in Sweden is actually harder than you think?

Home Field Advantage or not. Congratulations to NIP but also to Dreamhack for another incredible event in their Masters series. Next stop is the United States of America with Dreamhack Austin just a few short weeks away. Will the American crowd be able to cheer on an American victor? Only time will tell.