by The Premier League is set to unveil a revolutionary new version of its Video Assistant Referee system, based on semi-automatic offside technology (SAOT), which it says will create the best refereeing system in the world.
The AI-powered system has been developed by technology company Genius Sports, which will install 28 computer vision cameras in every Premier League stadium. The company is confident it can deliver VAR decisions within seconds, shaving minutes off top-flight matches.
The Premier League regularly suffered from long delays in VAR reviews last season, with referees taking 5 minutes and 37 seconds to disallow a West Ham goal against Aston Villa in March. The average VAR review took 64 seconds, resulting in the average match duration being almost 102 minutes.
Premier League football’s chief executive Tony Scholes admitted in February that VAR delays were spoiling games for fans and the top flight manager responded by recommending the introduction of SAOT. Clubs voted unanimously to introduce the new technology in April, although its adoption was briefly in doubt when Wolves proposed scrapping VAR altogether in June in an extraordinary move that received no further votes.
Following a competitive tender process, Genius Sports appears to have won the SAOT contract over the Premier League’s existing data partner Hawk-Eye. In tests carried out at several Premier League and Champions League matches last season, the referee-operated SAOT made decisions within seconds, leading Genius to claim the average wait time could be reduced to around 30 seconds.
The computer vision cameras capture 10,000 surface data points for each player and the ball, allowing Genius to instantly create so-called “offside walls” for the VAR and referees. The 3D player graphics will also be made available to TV viewers. The details are yet to be agreed, but the detailed player graphics with clear offside lines could also be shown in stadiums, which would significantly improve the game experience for fans.
The Premier League claims that by collecting billions of data points, it will have the most sophisticated refereeing system in sport, enabling unprecedented precision in every offside decision.
The new system will not be deployed until after the international break next month as it will take time to install the cameras and other technology in stadiums. Hawk-Eye will continue to operate the goal-line technology in the Premier League for at least one more season as its contract expires next summer.
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In addition to the delays, the Premier League has suffered a number of spectacular offside errors over the past season. In February, VAR failed to recognise that a Brentford player was offside when setting up a goal at Arsenal, and on the same day, manually drawn lines were placed on the wrong Crystal Palace defender, leading to a Brighton goal being wrongly disallowed.
The introduction of the SAOT system is intended to ensure that such errors are not repeated, but it will not prevent the faux pas that led to a Liverpool goal being wrongly disallowed for offside at Tottenham last October due to poor communication between the referees.
SAOT was first introduced by UEFA for the 2022–23 Champions League. FIFA also used it for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
