Artificial intelligence could replace referees within 30 years expert

Referees could be replaced by robots within the next 30 years, an expert in the field believes.

Artificial intelligence is already prominent in officiating, with the use of VAR and goalline technology, but it is expected to heavily increase in the future.

With more high-quality data available, it could be possible for matches to be officiated by an AI-powered machine, taking away the need for an on-field human referee.

Computer vision will be more and more effective in the next few years and the number of cameras on the pitch will only increase, Aldo Comi, chief executive of leading global football analytics provider Soccerment, told the PA news agency.

The amount of data that is tagged and the quality of the models that are trained with that data will increase exponentially and thanks to that you will have AI models that can make refereeing decisions on the back of what they see on the pitch.

So we might get to the point where we dont need a referee at all.

Before that, you will maybe have a referee but not linesmen, maybe they will be the first to disappear from the game. And you will have the referee connected to the virtual assistant, guiding them to make better decisions.