Roger Goodell Says NFL Fans Won't Provide Much Home-Field Advantage For Teams In 2020 Season

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell doesn’t think it’s a problem that some teams will open the season with fans in the stands while others play in empty stadiums.

Goodell has pushed back on the notion that teams that play at home in front of crowds will have a major edge compared to those that don’t.

“I would probably take issue with the fact that it’s a huge competitive advantage,” Goodell told CNBC Wednesday. “As you know, our stadium sizes are different across the league. The attendance is different in a normal season. We do not see, and our clubs do not see, a competitive advantage at all whether fans are in one stadium or another.”

Most teams have announced that they won’t allow fans inside the stadium, at least for the first few weeks of the season. The Kansas City Chiefs and Dallas Cowboys are among the clubs that have made plans for limited-capacity seating.

The Chiefs, which kick off the 2020 season on Sept. 10 against the visiting Houston Texans, expects to host approximately 16,000 paying customers at Arrowhead Stadium.

“We want our fans to be able to experience the games, so that’s always been our intent is to open up for our fans,” Goodell said. “But public health and safety is No.1 for us. If local officials are not comfortable from a medical standpoint, we’re obviously gonna heed that and we’re going to obey that and we’re gonna do the appropriate thing. We’re gonna have two or three stadiums next week which will have significant fans in them, and I believe that will continue to grow as the season goes on.”

The league is working on allowing venues to use fake crowd noise, though the exact details haven’t been finalized. The NFL has been considering artificial crowd noise in the range of 70 to 85 decibels for games that don’t have fans present, ProFootballTalk reported last week.

“We obviously are going to try to make sure that the experience in the stadium, as well through our television partners, reflects the same kind of enthusiasm,” Goodell said. “We’ve been curating crowd noise for the last four years through NFL films, and they really have I think what is a unique way with our broadcast partners of making sure it’s not artificial, it’s really authentic.”

Home-field advantage has seemingly meant less and less each year. Teams only won 51.7% of their games at home last season, the lowest mark since 1972. Home teams won 59.8% of their games in the 1990s.

Of the 12 teams that made last season’s playoffs, only three had a better home record than road record.