Road game more commonly known as an away game, is a reference to all cities

City

A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...

 and stadia

Stadium

A modern stadium is a place or venue for outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a structure designed to allow spectators to stand or sit and view the event.)Pausanias noted that for about half a century the only event...

/arena

Arena

An arena is an enclosed area, often circular or oval-shaped, designed to showcase theater, musical performances, or sporting events. It is composed of a large open space surrounded on most or all sides by tiered seating for spectators. The key feature of an arena is that the event space is the...

s/field

Playing field

A playing field is a field used for playing sports or games. They are generally outdoors, but many large structures exist to enclose playing fields from bad weather. Generally, playing fields are wide expanses of grass, dirt or sand without many obstructions...

s/venues where an athletic team plays games for which it is not the host. Most professional teams represent cities or towns and amateur sports teams often represent academic institutions. Each team has a location where it practices during the season and where it hosts games.

When a team is not the host, it must travel to games (usually by bus or car, hence "road", though increasingly also by plane for longer journeys). Thus, when a team is not hosting a game, the team is described as the road team, the visiting team, or the away team, and the game is described as a road game or an away game for that team. The venue in which the game is played is described as the visiting stadium or the road. The host team is said to be the home

Home (sports)

In sports, home is a term referring to both the city and stadium, arena, or field where an athletic team plays games at their venue, whilst when the team plays elsewhere then they are considered the away team. The home term can refer to either the sponsoring institution or the place where it is...

 team.

The home team

Home team

In team sports, the term home advantage describes the advantage–usually a psychological advantage–that the home team is said to have over the visiting team as a result of playing in familiar facilities and in front of supportive fans...

 is often thought to have a home advantage over the visiting team, because of their familiarity with the environment, their shorter travel times, and the influence that a parochial crowd may have over an official's decisions. Another home team advantage that is unique to baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 is familiarity with the home ballpark

Baseball park

A baseball park, also known as a baseball stadium, ball park, or ballpark is a venue where baseball is played. It consists of the playing field and the surrounding spectator seating...

's outfield

Outfield

The outfield is a sporting term used in cricket and baseball to refer to the area of the field of play further from the batsman or batter than the infield...

 dimensions and height of the outfield wall, as well as the size of foul territory

Foul ball

In baseball, a foul ball is a batted ball that:* Settles on foul territory between home and first base or between home and third base, or* Bounds past first or third base on or over foul territory, or...

 and location of in-play obstacles (e.g., a bullpen

Bullpen

In baseball, the bullpen is the area where relief pitchers warm-up before entering a game. Depending on the ballpark, it may be situated in foul territory along the baselines or just beyond the outfield fence. Also, a team's roster of relief pitchers is metonymically referred to as "the bullpen"...

 on the playing field). Major sporting events, if not held at a neutral venue, are often over several legs at each team's home ground, so that neither team has an advantage over the other.

Occasionally, the road team may not have to travel very far at all to a road game. These matches often become local derbies

Local derby

In many countries the term local derby, or simply just derby means a sporting fixture between two, generally local, rivals, particularly in association football...

. (Also, see the article on subway series

Subway Series

The Subway Series is a series of Major League Baseball games played between teams based in New York City. The term's historic usage has been in reference to World Series games played between New York teams...

 for baseball series played between the New York Yankees, and New York's National League teams, and similar series between other teams that play in the same city or state.) A few times a year, a road team may even be lucky enough to have the road game played at their own home stadium or arena. This is prevalent in college athletics

College athletics

College athletics refers primarily to sports and athletic competition organized and funded by institutions of tertiary education . In the United States, college athletics is a two-tiered system. The first tier includes the sports that are sanctioned by one of the collegiate sport governing bodies...

 where many schools will often play in regional leagues or groundshare

Groundshare

Groundshare is the principle of sharing a stadium between two local sport teams. This is usually done for the purpose of reducing the costs of either construction of two separate facilities and related maintenance. -Intersport Groundshares:...

.

In some association football leagues, particularly in Europe, the away team's fans sit in their own section. Depending on the team's stadium, they will either sit in a designated section or be separated from the home fans by a cordon of police officers and stadium officials. When games are played at a neutral site, for instance the FA Cup final in England which is always played at Wembley Stadium, both teams' fans will be allotted an even number of tickets. This results in each team occupying one half of the stadium. This is different from other sports, particularly in North America, where very few fans travel to games played away from their home stadium. Home and Away fans are also not separated at these games.

As recognition for the difficulty in winning away matches, cup competitions in association football often invoke the away goals rule. Away goals can also sometimes be used to separate teams level on points and goal difference in league competitions.