Home Advantage or Home Pressure? The Two-Edged Sword of Competing on Home Soil
A discussion around the impact of a 'home' crowd on performance in the lead up to the 2026 Commonwealth Games
Dan Lockwood
6/6/20264 min read
With just over a month to go until the 2026 Commonwealth Games come to Glasgow this summer, British athletes are preparing for what many will describe as the opportunity of a lifetime. Competing on home soil, in front of tens of thousands of passionate supporters, with the weight of a nation behind you. It sounds like the perfect recipe for peak performance. But is it really that simple?
As a sport psychologist, one of the most interesting questions I come across is whether a home crowd genuinely helps athletes perform better, or whether it can also work against them. The honest answer is that it can do both, and understanding which way it goes often comes down to what is happening inside an athlete's head.
The Case for Home Advantage
There is solid evidence that competing at home can genuinely boost performance. Research consistently shows that teams and athletes win more often on home ground across a wide range of sports. But what actually drives that? It is not magic, and it is not just familiarity with the facilities. A key factor is the crowd itself, which appears to raise the performance of home competitors relative to away competitors, while also potentially influencing officials to subconsciously favour the home side.
From a psychological standpoint, a roaring crowd can provide a real lift. Supportive crowd noise can enhance performance by boosting motivation and adrenaline levels. When thousands of people are chanting your name or cheering every move you make, it can create a sense of energy and momentum that is genuinely hard to replicate in any other environment. There is also something deeply human about wanting to do well for the people who matter to you, and a home crowd can tap right into that.
For team sports in particular, shared energy from a crowd can strengthen group cohesion. Players feed off each other's reactions to the noise around them, and that collective buzz can translate into greater effort, sharper decision making, and a willingness to push through discomfort.
When the Crowd Becomes a Burden
So far, so good. But here is where it gets interesting, because the same crowd that can carry an athlete to victory can also quietly pull them apart.
Sports psychologists have long recognised something called the "home choke," a phenomenon where athletes actually perform worse in front of their home supporters compared to a neutral or away environment. Research suggests that athletes can become more self-conscious and internally focused when playing in front of a home crowd, and this inward shift in attention is a big driver of choking under pressure.
Think about what this means in practice. A swimmer at Glasgow 2026 who has trained for years for this moment suddenly finds themselves at the blocks, aware of the noise, aware of the expectation, and aware that thousands of people specifically want them to win. Instead of their mind being free to do what it has done thousands of times in training, it starts monitoring. Am I doing this right? What if I make a mistake? The crowd is watching my every move. This drop in performance happens when people consciously monitor skill-based processes that are best executed as automated actions. Overthinking, essentially, is the enemy.
Former world number one tennis player Amélie Mauresmo spoke about how competing at Roland Garros in front of a home French crowd affected her, saying "it's a great opportunity to be playing in front of your home crowd. It should bring the best out of me but it doesn't." She never made it past the quarter-finalsthere across her entire career. That is an example of just how real this effect can be, even at the very highest level.
The Role of Expectations
At the heart of this tension is expectation. A home crowd does not simply cheer. It expects. And for athletes who are considered favourites or are well known to the crowd, that expectation carries significant weight. Research has shown that high audience expectations can harm performance in skill-based tasks, and this phenomenon is not just found in the lab but in sport itself.
For Scottish athletes competing in Glasgow, this is particularly relevant. These will not be anonymous faces in the programme. Many will be local heroes, names their communities have followed for years. The pride associated with that is enormous, but so is the pressure. Every stumble could feel more public, every mistake more visible. That is a heavy psychological load to carry alongside everything else competition demands.
What Separates Those Who Thrive from Those Who Struggle
Interestingly, the research does not suggest that home pressure affects everyone equally. Back at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scottish swimmer Michael Jamieson captured this distinction when he said "athletes go one of two ways in major competitions. You either thrive in that atmosphere or you don't enjoy it and you're not able to get the best out of yourself."
What tends to separate these two groups is not talent, and it is not even experience alone. It comes down to how an athlete interprets the situation in front of them. Those who thrive tend to view the crowd's energy as fuel rather than threat. They have practised performing under scrutiny, they trust their preparation, and their attention stays focused outward on the task rather than inward on how they are coming across.
Those who struggle tend to interpret the exact same environment as threatening. Their attention narrows inward, their movements become effortful, and their performance suffers not because their body can’tdo the job, but because their mind gets in the way.
The good news is that this is absolutely something athletes can work on. Developing psychological skills such as attentional control, pre-performance routines, cognitive reframing, and pressure-based training can all help an athlete learn to ride the wave of a home crowd rather than drown in it.
What This Means for You
You do not have to be a Commonwealth Games athlete for any of this to be relevant to you. Perhaps youplay in a local football team and feel more nervous when your family come to watch. Perhaps you are a runner who always performs better in away events than at your home club. Perhaps you are an athlete who feeds off big crowds and wonders why your teammates do not.
All of these experiences are rooted in the same psychology. The crowd, the expectation, and how your mind chooses to process those things in the moment.
As the Glasgow Games approaches, watching how British athletes navigate this challenge will be fascinating in itself. Will the roar of the home crowd propel them to medals? Or will the weight of expectation prove too much for some? Either way, there will be powerful lessons in how the mind shapes what the body is capable of.
