The Innovation of Refereeing in Football Through AI

Digital transformation owns megatrend character. Especially technologies of artificial intelligence (AI) will help organizations to solve problems in the future. Therefore, the relationship between humans and technology will become increasingly intertwined. The use of AI in football refereeing is whitely unexplored. Wrong referee decisions lead to negative economic and psychological consequences and are therefore problematic. Accordingly, by the advances in AI, there is an increasing demand for the application of this technology to improve the precision of referee decisions. This paper applies a set of qualitative research methods to assess the potentials and limits of the use of AI for the support of referee decisions. Generally, judgements that have to do with positions are relatively easy to solve with the help of technology. However, referee decisions, which require a high degree of understanding for the situation, are considered difficult to implement. Hence, this paper identifies potentials for AI application in referee decisions, which are either black-or-white and outlines the limits in referee decisions, which give space for interpretation.