What’s more, referees doled out much more foul calls to home teams than before during these crowdless “ghost games.” With stands mostly or entirely empty, home team win rate decreased by 8.3 percentage points, from 48.1 percent to 39.8 percent, the researchers found. With fans absent, foul calls against home teams increased by around 26 percent, while calls against away teams increased by only about 3 percent.