Researchers hypothesize that crowds could influence scores when a home country judge is on the panel. Photo: Cait Miers//WSL
New research into home-field advantage and judging bias in surfing revealed that WSL Championship Tour surfers benefit from having a judge from the same country on the panel when surfing in their home country. The study, published in the International Journal of Sport Finance, found that home surfers received higher scores when a domestic judge was on the panel.
The research established a few hypotheses, looking into whether surfers have an advantage at CT events in their home country and whether judges showed bias towards their compatriots.
They analyzed 21,013 waves ridden by 135 surfers on the men’s CT between 2017 and 2022. (2020-2021 was excluded due to COVID travel restrictions.) The dataset covers 37 events across 11 countries.
While the researchers didn’t find evidence that home surfers have a better chance of winning at their local CT event, they found a trend in judging bias. They revealed that when there is a home country judge on the panel, the scores tend to be lower, suggesting a more critical approach to scoring. Additionally, home country surfers scored .04 to .32 points higher on waves over 5.5 points in heats influenced by a home-country judge, implying that there is a degree of bias.
The paper notes that, while statistically significant, in practice, this home-country surfer and judging combination probably doesn’t influence results too often, given that heats are won, on average, by 2.78 points.
Other factors, such as a surfer being sponsored by the event sponsor and an athlete’s performance in previous events, didn’t impact results.
The authors say that crowd reaction might explain the judging trends. They provide two recommendations for the WSL: be more transparent in the criteria of how judges are selected to make it easier to track any bias, and train judges on techniques to reduce bias.
At the Paris 2024 Olympics, the International Surfing Association decided to remove an Australian judge from the panel after a photo surfaced on social media of the judge posing with Australian surfer Ethan Ewing — not for proven bias, but the perception of bias.
The researchers do mention that studying the women’s CT would add valuable data to the research, looking into possible gender biases. It also says another problematic point of the data is that it’s difficult to determine a surfer’s “home spot,” given that sometimes a surfer’s nationality does not always correspond with the area they call home.
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