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Home (sports)

In sports, home is the place and venue identified with a team sport. Most professional teams are named for, and marketed to, particular metropolitan areas;[1] amateur teams may be drawn from a particular region, or from institutions such as schools or universities.[2] When they play in that venue, they are said to be the "home team"; when the team plays elsewhere, they are the away, visiting, or road team. Home teams wear home colors.

For the batting and scoring base in baseball, see Home plate.

Uniforms or kits[edit]

Rules and conventions often apply to the choice of home and away colors. In Australian football, the home team traditionally wears their regular jumper and black (or colored) shorts, while the away team wears a lighter coloured variant of their jumper and/or white shorts. In American football and ice hockey, most home teams often wear uniforms that feature their official team colors, whereas the visiting team wears white or colors opposite of the home team's choice. On the other hand, in baseball and basketball, the home team will typically choose to wear the lighter colored version of its uniform. Many teams have a home uniform which is mostly white and referred to as the "home whites".


The road team will generally wear a version of its uniform with one of the darker of its official colors as the main color, or in baseball with a grey main color referred to as the "road greys". The term "home whites" originated in the early days of Major League Baseball. Typically the visiting team had no access to laundry facilities and thus the players were unable to clean their uniforms on the road. By wearing grey or another dark color the visiting team was better able to conceal the dirt and grass stains that had accumulated on their uniforms over the course of the series. The home team, having access to laundry facilities, was able to wear clean white uniforms each day, hence the term "home whites".

Homerism[edit]

Especially in team sports, but also in international sports (home represented by the home country), a "home" crew is assigned to cover all the home games, and sometimes the "home" crew travels on the road to cover away games as well. It's understood that a home broadcasting crew will talk more about the familiar home players, but this should not come at the cost of covering actual play on the field. When this line is crossed, crews are accused of being "homers" or of displaying "homerism".


In online fan forums, "homers" are participants for whom the home team can do no wrong, and the away team can do no right. This is cognate with extremist forms of partisan politics.

Miscellaneous[edit]

In any context where a game score or the pair of teams meeting in a game are mentioned, the team mentioned first (left or top) is the home team, except in the United States, Canada, and Japan, where home teams are mentioned second. The North American and Japanese practice of listing the home team second likely derives from baseball, in which the home team bats after the visiting team in each inning.[8] Exceptions are found in most North American soccer competitions, where the international standard of listing the home team first is mostly adhered to.


Typically, the home team has responsibilities such as supplying the venue and equipment, hosting its opponent, media and the officials (referees, umpires, etc.), and may have the opportunity to sell tickets, food and media rights.

Road (sports)