Competition management systems and athlete management systems have been commonplace for a while now, but what about the needs of the third team involved in every match, the referees and umpires? In an industry where the turnover rate can reach up to 80% in years 1-3, and in some areas, 13% of officials have been subjected to physical assault, you’d think there would be more resources dedicated to assisting with the management of a key function within every sports league in the world. Thankfully, we’re working to solve the key problems for referee and umpire managers in a range of sports, and have highlighted the 5 main features of our Referee Management System.

1. Manage the retention and turnover of referees and umpires

The number one problem for officiating managers is managing retention. For a variety of reasons, it’s very difficult to keep tabs on how all of your referees are doing, particular with many leagues having over 1,000 referees. A Referee Management System can effectively complete the data collection, analysis and reporting process for you, meaning that you just need to log on and see which referees and umpires require assistance, and which teams are causing issues for referees.

2. Reduce abuse from teams

A lot of referee and umpiring managers talk about the difficulty of imposing sanctions to teams who disrespect officials because there is no record of their behaviour. Unfortunately, there is a lot of abuse that falls outside of a misconduct or incident report form. By enabling referees and umpires to submit a simple rating system of the behaviour of each team they officiate, patterns and trends quickly emerge showing the average behaviour of teams. Additional comments also assist to hone in on the issues occurring, whether from players, coaches or supporters, or combination of all three. You can download reports to provide to league personnel responsible for team behaviour management and provide reports directly to club committees.

3. Identify your best officials and areas for improvement

There is a lot of time and effort spent on recruiting assessors, observers and mentors. However, the data collection and reporting process doesn’t maximise the value of these roles. Usually, assessment reports are quite archaic, and often require a lot of manual reporting to highlight individual and group performance. The ability to perform assessments in a smartphone or tablet and, more importantly, have a system automate the statistics and insights becomes a powerful tool for managing development and growing your talent pipeline. We work with you to provide a simplified assessment process and enable you to design your perfect reports for anything from overall rating, to individual skills such as positioning and communication.

4. Engage your referees and umpires

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that referees and umpires view completing an online form or survey on top of all of their other work as a burden. Given that a lack of resources can make it difficult to collect and analyse the information submitted, a low level of engagement from referees makes the entire process impossible. You can see the obvious benefits to using a smartphone app that enables referees and umpires to track their performances, monitor their results and receive feedback from managers and mentors.

5. Automate reports and insights

Rather than deciding what questions might work best, or trying to become an excel wizard in addition to everything else you’re required to do, you can simply login and view the most important data with a Referee Management System. We’ve helped a range of national, state and local leagues and associations monitor the key metrics for their referees, from automating team behaviour reports to predicting turnover, effectively managing data can create a new solution for referee management.

Summary

The data being collected by referees can provide significant value to league executive committees outside of officiating. From tracking the environment at all matches, to ensuring pitches and facilities are well-maintained, all while gaining a deeper understanding of what match officials are going through. Referee Managers and leagues can greatly benefit from using a Referee Management System, are we’re here to help bring in a new era of referee empowerment and improvement to the environment at all sports matches.