University news

Home teams playing in the Champions League and Europa League will be hoping they don’t get a Greek referee, after research from the University of Bath shows referees from Greece award more yellow cards to the home team than referees from any other country.

On the other hand, if you have a Belgian referee you are more likely to get away with foul play as they are noticeably lenient – only giving a red card to the home team once in every 62 matches on average.

The research proves what football fans have long suspected: the nationality of the referee matters.

Dr Peter Dawson, a lecturer in Economics at the University of Bath, collaborated with Professor Stephen Dobson, professor of Economics at Nottingham Trent University, to analyse 1,717 UEFA Cup (now the Europa League) and Champions League matches between 2002/3 and 2006/7 and found that referees are inconsistent in awarding red and yellow cards.

The research, to be published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, is the first study to look at what influences referee decision-making in an international setting and it highlights inconsistency across the continent:  

• Greek referees tend to issue more yellow cards to the home team compared to other nationalities.
• Portuguese referees issue more yellow cards to the away team and have the biggest difference between the number of cards issued to home and away teams of referees of any nationality.
• English referees on average issue more red cards to both the home team and the away team.
• Belgian officials appear to be extremely lenient, issuing a home team with a red card on average once in every 62 matches and on average once in every 15 matches for the away team.
• In general the frequency of red cards awarded to the away team tends to be higher than the home team and it is two to three times higher for referees from France, Russia, Scotland, Slovakia and Switzerland.

The research also shows that the decision to award red and yellow cards is influenced by the nationality of the club and the reputation of the club’s domestic league:

• Romanian, Italian and Spanish clubs tend to incur more red and yellow cards, whether they are playing home or away.
• Teams playing against Italian clubs tend to be issued with fewer sanctions.
• Teams playing Spanish or Portuguese clubs typically tend to receive more cards than when playing clubs from other nations.

Home teams from one of the ‘big five’ leagues – England, Italy, Germany, Spain and France- capitalise on their reputation by incurring fewer sanctions when playing a team from outside the ‘big five’, and the effect is significant for an away team from one of the big five leagues. More red and yellow cards are awarded to both teams in a match if they are both from the big five.

Dr Dawson said: “The research suggests that referees’ split-second decisions are influenced by national identity, both of the referee and the club, and by perceptions of team quality and reputation. The study didn’t look at the race of referees or players, so we are not talking about racial discrimination.

“Referees from smaller nations tend to be more biased. They’re more influenced by the reputations of clubs from larger nations. In particular, there’s a tendency for these referees to favour home teams.

“The evidence provides a firm factual foundation to help football authorities debate what positive action they might take to ensure fair and equitable refereeing. It could include encouraging referees to avoid what is presumably unintentional bias in their decision-making.”

Dr Dawson and Professor Dobson collected data on club name, club nationality, number of red and yellow cards in each match, referee name and nationality, date and time of the match and match attendance. They also collected data to measure team quality and characteristics of the stadium.

They devised equations to estimate the effect of referee and club nationality, team quality, crowd size, architecture of the stadium and the stage of the competition, on the number of red and yellow cards awarded.

Dr Dawson, a Wigan fan, has previously found that referees in national leagues favour home teams when awarding red and yellow cards.

“Consistent with research in domestic leagues we found that the social pressure created by the crowd is an influence on decision-making, together with the architecture of the stadium and the size of the crowd. The type and stage of the competition also has a bearing,” said Dr Dawson.  

“This study shows that the choice of referee is important. It can have an important bearing on the match, which has significant financial consequences for the clubs and individuals involved. 

“While our analysis shows that nationality is an important influence on referee decision- making, getting a precise measure of the size of the effect is difficult, partly because it is not easy to disentangle the interplay between referee nationality, club nationality and team reputation. One way to shed even more light on this matter is to conduct a much larger study over a longer period of time.”

Disciplinary sanctions by referee nationality

Notes: The figures represent the average number of cards awarded per match, calculated from a minimum of 50 matches per nationality.