Is there a home field disadvantage in professional sports championships?

Recent researchers have suggested that home teams tend to lose decisive championship games in professional sport. We present data, suggesting that this result is only true for championship series involving the New York Yankees, the Boston Celtics, and the Montreal Canadiens. We argue that the home audiences of recurrent champions expect their teams to win. This pressure is communi-cated to the members of recurrent championship teams, and is the source of their performance decrements in decisive championship contents.