Lack of live VAR communication to football fans ‘a huge missed opportunity’

The boss of TNT Sports believes fans deserve to have greater insight into the decision-making process.

A key Premier League and Champions League rights holder supports improvements to how VAR reviews are communicated to fans (Jacob King/PA) (PA Wire)

The lack of communication around VAR decisions to fans in stadiums and watching on television is a “huge missed opportunity” according to the boss of a key Premier League and Champions League rights holder.

More than three quarters of match-goers (79.1 per cent) and two-thirds of TV viewers (65.4 per cent) rated their experience of VAR as either poor or very poor in a survey of almost 10,000 fans published by the Football Supporters’ Association last month.

Eighty per cent said fans should be able to hear live discussions between the VAR and the on-pitch referee, something not allowed under the current laws of the game.

TNT Sports, which replaces BT Sport from Tuesday, has pledged to be ‘Right By The Fans’ and believes supporters deserve greater visibility of the decision-making process.

Asked what influence TNT Sports could have on the Premier League and UEFA via its rights deals, Andrew Georgiou, the president and managing director of Warner Bros Discovery Sports Europe, told the PA news agency: “We can only share our position and we have shared our position with both UEFA and the Premier League who are our partners, and that is to say VAR is a really important moment in the sport.

“And at the moment we cannot tell the audience what’s going on, and that’s a challenge and I think it’s a huge missed opportunity.

“We would welcome a change that allowed us to share more about what’s going on between the referees in order to help educate the audience about the decision-making process, which I think will also help to defuse some of the misunderstandings around why some decisions are or are not made.

“I think it’s a massive positive if we can get that right.”

FIFA is currently trialling a new protocol in its competitions – including the Women’s World Cup which starts later this week – allowing referees to communicate the final decision at the end of a VAR check to stadium and television audiences.

Asked if that went far enough, Georgiou added: “We’ll take everything we can get. Honestly, I think the more you can share the better off you’ll be because, again, fans just want to understand and they can still disagree, but at least they know what they’re disagreeing with.

“When we talk about being ‘Right By The Fans’, the more we can share with them, what’s going on, the more we can engage with them about whether they agree or not. And that’s got to be our goal.”

Domestic leagues are also in favour of broadcasting the two-way audio between referees and VARs live, with 25 out of the World Leagues Forum’s 41 members in support in a survey published last month.

The Premier League, a member of the WLF, has not said which way it voted in the survey.

Howard Webb, the chief refereeing officer at Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), appeared on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football programme in May to review a number of VAR decisions taken earlier in the season, when for the first time the discussions between referees and VARs were heard.

PA understands PGMOL is looking to make such appearances a more frequent feature of the coming season, with Webb determined to make refereeing and the VAR review process more transparent within the limits imposed by the laws of the game.