ArticleFrontiers in psychology2026
When technology meets judgment: outcome of football referees' disciplinary decision-making after the implementation of VAR in the English Premier League.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: Video Assistant Referee (VAR) is a decision-support system that helps referees make more accurate decisions and eliminate clear and obvious errors. However, the implementation of VAR in world football has been one of the most significant and controversial technological procedures used. Methods: This study examines how the introduction of VAR has affected refereeing decisions in the English Premier League (EPL) by examining the number of red cards and penalties per match. Yellow cards were also implemented in the analyses as a possible hypothesis-generating cause. Using match-level data from the 2018/19 season (without-VAR) and the 2023/24 season (with-VAR), and using the English Championship as a control group, we apply a difference-in-differences (DiD) analysis to estimate the contributive effect of VAR's impact on three key outcomes: red cards, penalties and yellow cards awarded per match. Results: The results suggest a statistically significant increase in all three outcomes in the Premier League following the introduction of VAR, compared to the Championship where VAR was not implemented. The increase in red cards and penalties, both explicitly governed by the VAR protocol, likely reflects improved identification of clear and obvious errors. The observed rise in yellow cards suggests that VAR may exert an indirect influence on referee's behaviour, although this finding needs further investigation to be verified. Discussion: Notably, the estimates found in current study reflect only differences between the Premier League and the Championship and no further definitive causal effects should be drawn. This study contributes to the ongoing debate about VAR's role and potential impact on football referees' disciplinary decision-making behaviour and provides a foundation for further empirical research on the broader implications of VAR in football.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.