Why Human Referees Are Getting Replaced

In cricket, we have Hawkeye, but there is a thing called 'Umpires call' if it's wayy too close, allowing the human factor to still come into play. this way obv decisions given wrong are overturned, but the really close ones are still left to human judgment. Just thought you should know that.

The point of referees and umpires is to accurately evaluate the game and make calls, if technology can help do that better it should absolutely be used. The entertainment for me is the athletes playing the sport, that’s the human element. I don’t want to turn umpiring and refereeing into another secondary sport that also has human error.

I think there biggest problem with the VAR in football (soccer) is that they let the play go for far too long before invalidating it. Before, the referee and the line judges where making calls the moment they saw them, now you see a pass, then 5 more passes and then a goal, and 3 minutes later it turns out the first pass was offside and the goal doesn't count. It's also frustrating when you see a goal, but you can't celebrate until they validate it 3 minutes later. Even when it turns out it is valid the feeling is different.

Immediately as soon as you mentioned "it's 2004 and Serena Williams is playing Jennifer Capriati" i rolled my eyes cause I remember watching that match live and being appalled that such a horrible call was made. I don't miss these types of arguments at all. It's insane to me that players still lose points due to human error (at least at bigger tournaments that can afford it) when tech like Hawkeye exists.

I think Cricket does it the best. It's a shame that it wasn't covered in this video, but they brought in crazy tech into the game long before some of the sports like Football. In Cricket, the tech is there, but someone has to initiate to use it. You need to challenge the referees sitting on computers to use it to see if the on-field human call was right or not. You as a team only have limited number of wroong calls you can get too. There's still a lot of human element involved in the game, and everyone moves on if the call falls in the human margin of error. But the tech is soo accurate with ball tracking to the length of a mm. IMO it's the best example of usage of tech without ruining the game.

I think the main complaint about VAR among soccer fans, or at least Premier League fans, is really about how poor the implementation of the tech has been. That includes two main concerns: 1. the rules governing the use of the tech within the game, and 2. the amount of time it takes the ref to make a decision on the pitch when using the tech. The last one doesn't matter much for many other sports, but for soccer it's a major issue as the clock only stops at half-time and at the end of the game.

Hawk-Eye, developed in the UK, was first used in Cricket in 2000 and has been used ever since.

great video

Another problem I see in soccer in particular is that these complicated cases seem to happen too often and the game basically stops for a long time.

As a Brit, regarding football. The main disadvantage and frustration is still the human interpretations and how sometimes they’re not consistent. The other is the amount of time that it can take to make a decision. In football, the difficulty in scoring a goal adds to the value of the achievement and creates ecstatic fan reactions. Imagine passionately celebrating a goal and then having to wait a number of minutes to find out that it’s no longer valid. It detracts from the experience. Hopefully we can commit to and trust technology to make quick and accurate decisions in the near future!

Cricket definitely does it the best. Like all rhe other comments mentioned, the fact that teams lose a review if they get it wrong and the 'umpires call' system makes a big difference. Cricket has also had it for over a decade now.

2001 it was introduced in cricket and the best part is an external umpire makes the suggestion and recommends the on field umpire to make their decisions

Was Hawkeye not used in cricket decades ago already? I think its implementation of using the “umpires call” for close decisions finds the right balance between technology and the human element.

Hawkeye was first implemented in the sport of cricket to review a Leg Before Wicket (a form of dismissal in the sport), and I feel it is incorporated quite well into the sport where the batter would only be dismissed if half or more than half of the ball is projected to hit the wicket, or if the less than half the ball hits the stump the decision would be in favour with the decision the on-field umpire made without using any technology.  The same ideology could also be applied in other sports like soccer (the one with the biggest VAR related controversies) in which they could do something like the offside call would only be enacted if lets say more than 10% of the players body is in front of the line of incidence and that part of the body was not used to score a goal. Hawk-eye is not a bad thing necessarily but it should definitely be passed through on-field referees to incorporate on a certain level that human factor people find lacking in hawk-eye while also allowing just calls to be made through its help.

1:00 "The difference between a right and wrong call could be a championship" (shows Max verstappen) im dead 💀

as a major football fan ⚽️, i have to say my biggest issue with VAR is the way it’s such an incredible time sink. stoppage time has rly ballooned since VAR was first instituted. like the time it takes just to decide to reference VAR can be 4 minutes it feels absurd

It’s funny as a Belgian hearing her and the computer completely mispronounce Club Brugge and then saying “i got that one”

Loved hearing you chat with Marques about this, and fascinated by the full video! Gonna be an exciting world of sports tech.

I used to ref Soccer, offsides was always tricky, remember it isn't just about the one guy trying not to go offsides, but also the defense pushing up, trying to make him offside. I think the real issue is expectations. As long as players know even a toe over counts as offsides, they just need to play to that, and give themselves some room for error.

I work for Sony sports at a sister company of hawk eye and wanted to say thanks for the video! It’s already been shared across the company and folk are commenting on your impartiality and ability to explain this complex topic in such an entertaining way!