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PROVO — The higher the stakes, the more likely elite soccer referees are to favor players from their home country, according to a new study from Brigham Young University.
Players from a referee’s home country get called for fewer fouls and are fouled more often, the study found. BYU student Bryson Pope and his brother Nolan, an economic graduate student at the University of Chicago, analyzed data from 12 consecutive seasons of the European Champions League for the study.
“These referees who are what they call ‘elite status’ — the most experienced referees — counter-intuitively show this bias even more than their less experienced referee counterparts,” Pope said. “What that means is the more experienced the referee is, the more he tends to show an own-nationality bias.”
These referees who are what they call 'elite status' — the most experienced referees — counter-intuitively show this bias even more than their less experienced referee counterparts.
–Bryson Pope
The European Champions League, which is one of the biggest soccer tournaments in the world, has a rule that prevents referees from officiating the soccer games of clubs from their own country. However, European teams now include players from a mix of countries, so matchups where referees and players come from the same country happen all over the place, Pope said.
The double-edged benefit of a player having fewer fouls called on them and more fouls called on their opponents has been dubbed the “foul differential.” Typically a referee’s bias is shown in a foul differential of 10 percent, but the study found it can be as large as 24 percent.
“This bias actually increases the further you get along in the tournament,” Pope said. “The higher the stakes and the closer you get to the championship game, this bias is exhibited even more.”
He said they controlled for factors like language and culture because favorable calls could be the result of referees and players better understanding each other, but said there was still a significant nationality bias.
The higher the stakes and the closer you get to the championship game, this bias is exhibited even more.
–Bryson Pope
Pope said it will be difficult to schedule tournaments so a referee never officiates a game with a player from their own country, but suggested it might be possible to avoid it during semifinals and finals. He also said bringing attention to the bias might help eliminate the problem.
After BYU economics professor Joe Price published a similar study about referees in the NBA, the bias almost entirely disappeared: “Hopefully by raising awareness to the issue, referees will be under more scrutiny and will just do a better job of not being biased,” Pope said.
Pope, who played on the BYU soccer team, said he doesn’t expect the referee bias to come into play for the World Cup, since players are citizens of the country for which they play. Referees are not allowed to officiate their home country’s games.
The findings of the study will be presented by Pope at the Western Economic Association meetings in Denver in June.
