FIFA's semi-automated refereeing system promises neutrality but brims with bias. It's widely despised yet embraced by elites. It is, in other words, a lot like AI.
"VAR may hold up matches, de-beautify the beautiful game, and incur an overwhelming majority of fans' hatred, but at least it's not doing anything particularly meaningful, either. So what is VAR doing, then? The first we already hit on - it is, in theory, helping to protect the credibility of the leagues in charge of officiating football matches, as well as their profit streams.": In other words ...
... it's Credibility Theater. Like Security Theater at airports where, for example, containers of obviously harmless liquids are routinely confiscated in the name of thwarting "terrorism"*, it's absurd and irrelevant to its ostensible purpose, but it's a show of Doing Something about a Serious Problem. Erving Goffman famously argued that much behavior by individuals has a performative character, but that goes even more for institutions, especially large ones, whose bosses tend to be "truth-challenged" to begin with.
*Meanwhile, continuing mass murder in the Middle East, among other places, assures there will be no shortage of aspiring "terrorists" for many years to come.
The history of fencing contains both interesting parallels and differences.
Before the modern Olympics, rising nationalism, and the increasing corruption induced by international celebrity, fencing was a "gentleman's" sport that had a regular column in all of the best newspapers. Fencing bouts were judged by a jury of four directors, and the fencers themselves were expected to acknowledge fair touches. Fencing had to be visually clean and elegant with intelligible phrases so that directors or spectators could clearly see hits land. It was dramatic and aesthetically quite beautiful and was recognized as such in its time.
Celebrity, nationalism, and the Olympics crept in and the latter-day chivalric code of fencing corroded. Fencers stopped conceding points against them and juries were simply bribed. People complained that fencing had become a sport of "four blind men and a liar". These accusations were largely true and so the entire sport suffered a massive credibility problem. FIE (fencing's FIFA) introduced a technological innovation to take the human element out of it: electronic scoring. Fencing weapons and clothing were electrified. When a touch landed that met some basic physical qualifications, a circuit would be complete, the buzzer would sound, and a touch was proven.
Unlike VAR (or so it seems) this change was actually objective and accurate. But it completely destroyed the aesthetics and legibility of the sport. It's almost unwatchable for most people and now it has nothing in common with its classical roots. A fencing phrase now consists of two essentially simultaneous touches, leaving the referee to sort the technical arcana of which fencer actually had "right of way", that is, which fencer was eligible to make a touch in the first place. Electrification distorted the physics of the game as well: when you think of swordplay you probably think of cutting and thrusting. After electrification, one of the most efficient ways to land a touch is to use your foil like a whip. This technique is called a "flick" and it looks nothing like swordplay whatsoever.
The technology was largely hated by spectators. The game changed and people abandoned watching it. Fencing has never recovered its cultural cache.
I'm not a football (soccer) fan but it's easy to see the pattern. Technology is introduced to solve the problems global capitalism and international competition has caused. This technology interrupts the flow and legibility of the game, exsanguinating the human drama and replacing it with arcane technological adjudication. At least in fencing's case the technology itself basically works. VAR looks like a complete disaster.
I find this one a little too forced, both in a general sense and even more with the AI comparison. VAR is a tool; it can be either used well or badly. Most of the cases point to people using it badly. Sometimes the root problem is not in the VAR, but already in the rules that are badly conceived and would need rewriting.
As for the favouritism towards some teams over the others, unfortunately it does look like it and it stinks. Colonialism goes on in a new form one could say... Some form of favouritism has, to some extent, always been part of the game before the VAR era, and still is: referees not treating the superstars like other players (“Messi? Nah, he does not commit fouls, not really, come on… I can’t give him a red, can I?”). On the one hand you want to see the extra gifted players in action, on the other hand the other team that strives to win does not really care and would like to see the fair application of the rules for everyone… And so would I. Fairness is important.
Not sure about the survey as well. I find it a bit hard to believe that majority of people would actually be for completely eliminating VAR use. It is one thing to ask “Is the game less enjoyable with the VAR” and another to ask “Would you be for eliminating the VAR altogether”… If used properly, it can (and did) spot a lot of unjust decisions. I believe we should be able to find ways to get there; sometimes it takes a while to find the right balance (I am not excusing the blatant and obvious errors VARs have made, it surely does not help their case). And I also believe that after going back people would find themselves in situation where they would be sorry that we do not have VAR anymore…
The referees could also use their common sense and sometimes keep more with the spirit of the game than rigidly stick to the rules (which of course in a sense weakens the rules and invites other problems). Let’s take the example of the Swiss player getting the second yellow for simulation. At first, it was the Argentinian player getting a yellow card; in the real time it seemed like a foul. But the video footage shows that the Swiss player actually dives (which I do not understand really)… So would it be fair to give the yellow to the Argentinian player? It would not, I assume we would all agree. Would people really have inspected this one situation if VAR had not brought it up? I am not sure. In the end, the ref followed the rules (which probably might need adjusting) to the letter and gave him a second yellow; since he – unfortunately – already got one before (did he really deserved that one?), it meant a red for him and of course it had a big impact on the game. The ref could have – and should have in my opinion – made a judgment call and decided not to him the yellow…
The case of the USA player Balogun: here he might have seriously injured the opponent and today’s rules say that this is a red card. In the real time you would not really see it clearly since there is no “aggressive challenge”, they just both run trying to get to the ball… In the slowed replay it does look horrible. It does not seem intentional and I do not see any uncontrolled aggressivity; sometimes you cannot quite control all the movements and things just happened and sometimes they do have bad consequences, like a serious injury of the opponent. On the other hand, if Balogun did not pursue the ball, the situation would not have happened at all… But of course he has to pursue it... So is it fair that you almost break another players’s leg (and possibly eliminate him from the game for weeks or months), but do not get a red card? I would say no. Would I give him a red in this instance? Probably not (I believe the Bosnian player could have gone on, could he not?). At least in this case one cannot say that VAR was biased towards the “more preferable team” (in the eyes of FIFA)…
There used to be some nasty challenges with the challenging player always claiming “I got the ball” (and some still use this claim) while almost breaking someone’s leg in the follow-through… That is why the rules were adjusted to deal with similar situations and also some rules for “serious foul play/injury” were introduced where intentionality does not really come into consideration I suppose (who can decide whether there was intention or not, in some cases it seems to be quite difficult).
Now I am going to say something for which I might be ridiculed… which is sort of part of the problem. Why do players simulate without any remorse? Or, if a player touches a ball going over the line and referee misses it, should the player not come clean? Same thing if he plays with a hand etc. Why does the English team not admit that the ball touched the cable? Did they not see it? It is “win at all costs”. Players always claiming “it’s our ball” even when it is obvious that it is not… People behaving dishonestly right in front our eyes and no one really calling it out… where is personal integrity and character? Nowhere to be found or at least very scarce. And that is, I think, one of the big causes of our problems today, because, in the end, there is always a person behind every decision (an investor/manager/politician that does not care for the environment and people/takes a bribe/looks away…).
Let's grant it's a tool only. But if a tool is meant to improve the result, and it doesn't, isn't it a pretty worthless tool?
And if the issue is human bias, well, if bias is effecting the non VAR process and the VAR process, it's unclear to me how the technology is particularly an improvement.
Tech always has to be evaluated in social contexts. It's why Brian emphasized it as a sociotechnical construct. It's also why he emphasized social or political reasons for its adoption--if it isn't particularly improving the experience or the results, one is forced to look for other reasons for its continued persistence that are non technical.
And this is why the comparison with AI is apt (although the obvious social consequences of costly adoption of AI are far more important).
[writing in a friendly, discussion-inviting, non-confrontational way] I did see Brian’s points that you pointed out, but I just do not quite agree with them.
Let’s go back some years, before the TV broadcast. The only spectators were people at the stadium; then, just as now, mistakes were made by the refs, but there was no way to go back and review the situations, so any disputes about correctness of the decisions were only opinions with no solid backing. This changed with the television, recording of the games and possibility of replays, especially after the number of cameras (and thus viewing angles) rose and quality of the image improved so that you can see everything. This marks what we could call “the first technology invasion” that influenced the world of football. Now you had many more spectators, all with a better view than the referee. And of course so much more commercial interests to be exploited…
The referee cannot see it all, that is true in theory and in practice, especially with today’s game speed and physicality. So what could be done? Enter VAR (the reasons for the VAR introduction are well stated in the article, but see also Patrikc’s comment down here, https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/what-var-tells-us-about-ai/comment/294292924, that goes more into the reasons why VAR was introduced).
What is actually VAR? To be precise, it is not just a tool, but rather another person with a tool: the TV screen (or several people with many screens it seems now). So another person – fallible and corruptible – was introduced into the refereeing process. The difference is that VAR actually can, compared to the regular referee, solve many situations fairly and justly – definitely in theory, the problem is with the practice. Here at least two things can go wrong: the rules are not well written or the refs make bad decisions.
My point regarding VAR was that it is, in theory, a useful process (an improvement I would say) that can prevent instances of blatant injustice – and these moments certainly do enrage people and I believe that most of us want the games to be as fair as possible. Yes, there were mistakes/biases before VAR and there are mistakes/biases with VAR, but different mistakes – and I still believe that we can get to the point when the process works also in practice, free of those mistakes that we see in the latest World Cup.
I do not agree with the view that VAR is a worthless tool; just from watching games, I’d say it makes the decisions fairer in 90 % of the use, the rest are (sometimes truly unfathomable and rightly criticised) mistakes. Of course, the controversial decisions, like the ones that unfortunately plague the latest tournament, are the ones that are most talked about (and might easily skew the polls), but they are exceptions, not the rule, and it would not be wise, in my opinion, to judge the VAR just on them.
I do not think the VAR was pushed as a technological solution for the technology’s sake and I do not agree with Brian’s statement “It’s a ubiquitous automation and surveillance system, adopted and maintained by those in positions of power with promises of progress and improvement”. It was supposed to help and resolve certain situations (in the given social context), and I believe, one day, it will do so without too many controversies.
Could we go back and get rid of the VAR, of this “second technology invasion”? Or even stop the TV broadcasts? Sure. Would there be exactly the same issues as before. Most certainly… Every path will have its pros and cons.
A little aside note: Do I shake my head when a goal is disallowed because of a one centimetre offside? Yes, I do. Or because the sensor in the ball is triggered, even though the path of the ball did not change a bit? Yes, I do.
As for the experience of the game: I suppose it is different for the people at the stadium and for those watching TV; I would guess that the first ones would probably be more critical of the VAR (“it breaks the flow”) than the TV spectators.
Am I a promoter of the VAR? Not really. I could live without it. Just as I could live without the endless commercialization of the game…
Just to address some of your points in the final paragraph, as a game designer/professor:
Players cheat, bend rules, behave in non-ethical ways in every competitive game ever designed in which winning has positive "real life" outcomes. Further, a game's rules are only truly respected if they are enforceable by every player. Every time there is an outside force in charge, players will try to win a competitive advantage over others and will risk negative reprecussions regardless of the potential severity of the punishment.
In football/soccer there's the added component of there being one main ref and 2 line refs for an enormous pitch and a sport in which there's quite a bit of contact, so players have learned to exaggerate to "aid" refs in calling fouls. This often goes too far (see above) but is actually very understandable for legitimate instances because while some of the contact may not literally cause a player to fall and feel pain, it does disrupt balance or impedes actions because it's hard to control a sphere with your feet while also running. Fans and practioners of the sport know this.
"The uploader has not made this video available in your country".
Please provide links (or the gist).
Oh, and the red card for the U.S. player was absolutely justified, and he should have been banned from the game. He stamped his foot down on the other team's player, with intention. So much for fair play.
I agree that the red card was justified and it would not be a controversial punishment in most leagues. It's maybe a bit harsh because it wasn't intentional, but a yellow would be very soft.
I think at least some of the comments pushing back on the applicability of the VAR argument to AI may be because you didn't explicitly define accountability sinks. From "The Unaccountability Machine" book description at https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo252799883.html:
"accountability sinks: systems in which decisions are delegated to a complex rule book or set of standard procedures, making it impossible to identify the source of mistakes when they happen. In our increasingly unhuman world—lives dominated by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and large organizations—these accountability sinks produce more than just aggravation. They make life and economy unknowable—a black box for no reason."
In this world cup there were several instances of referee teams justifiying decisions that made little sense in the context of the logic, tradition, and purpose of the game, strongly influencing the outcome of games. They were able to do so by offloading accountability to complicated rules or systems like VAR or new sensors on the ball (which can easily malfunction or encounter out-of-specification conditions) . The reason this line of thought clearly applies to AI, at least in the case of LLMs and other neural network architectures, is that its workings are very much a black box, so it is very easy to simply shift accountability to the machine, especially when it confirms your biases or supports your agenda.
The reason we need humans making important decisions in complex situations involving other people (we are not talking about thermostats here) is not just so that they can catch things the systems are not able to (a reverse centaur situation in Cory Doctorow's terminology); it is so that we can maximize accountability and keep our focus on values rather than rules or metrics (what Thi Nguyen would call "value capture"). Tools and automation can help support decision-making, but can never completely replace it without incurring a strong accountability trade-off.
I enjoyed the VAR analysis, particularly the argument that automation does not eliminate human judgment or institutional bias—it can simply relocate that judgment into a less visible technical system. Your examples make that case very well.
I’m less persuaded by the final comparison with AI. The VAR case is tightly argued around one defined system, one governing institution, and a visible pattern of contested decisions. The claim that AI broadly operates against the will of most people for the benefit of a small elite arrives much faster and without the same evidentiary structure.
There is an important argument to make that AI may be moving through society too quickly because hyperscalers, executives, and investors have powerful incentives to accelerate adoption. But that argument deserves its own analysis. Attaching it to VAR by analogy risks weakening what is otherwise a very strong examination of how technological systems can obscure rather than remove institutional choices.
And Paris during the World Cup sounds like a pretty wonderful place from which to watch the argument unfold.
I don't watch football , but I live in Argentina, so I hear every goal. But this is very disappointing news. I have respect for Messi, but if Egypt deserved the goal, and possibly win, it's very sad that Messi will end his career on a high note, because AI stepped in to help it along. Everything is becoming fake, driven by metrics, and it makes me ill.
Baseball fan here, have often wondered if Yankees especially benefited from officiating. Eg in 1996, blatant fan interference gave them a HR, led to first title in 18 years
I agree to the general argument. And I don't like the current VAR and its rules either.
But you also mentioned why the system was introduced: the gap between referees on the pitch and a dozen UHD cameras with super slow-motion overanalysing every decision by them.
Especially in high-stake games, the media (AFAIK in Germany and the UK) and/or fans often blamed referees (often in unhinged intensity!) for things they couldn't realistically see from their position: close complex off-sides, some hidden fouls or player acting fouled, a hidden hand-play, millimeter-behind-the-line calls and so on.
So VAR was a reaction to that massive pressure on the referees. So where is the solution for that problem that is better than VAR? Because they deserve a solution...
Great article, Brian. Very interesting. One thing, and it's got nothing to do with VAR or AI, but 'football' is also football to us plebes. Only in the USA is it downgraded to 'soccer'. :-)
I'm not sure I buy this as an AI piece. Yes, VAR is controversial, but then so was Hawkeye when it came into tennis and cricket. In the former case, plenty of line judges have lost their jobs, so perhaps that's less of a stretch? All sports technology is controversial - see the debate about running shoes, which currently doesn't have any IT component as far as I'm aware.
One could argue that the only conflict more serious than sport is war.
Today I went toe to toe with AI in a debate over the war in Ukraine—the one we call "Russia's war" that is, in fact, U.S. imperialism's war.
According to AI, I won. My initial query involved the late, great British historian A.J.P. Taylor's book "The Origins of the Second World War." He argued that Hitler was not so much an ideologue as an opportunist. The same has been said, invoking Taylor, about Putin, who is, in fact, neither ideologue nor opportunist but a man trying to protect Russia from well-documented though never reported facts about the purpose of the West's relentless NATO expansion.
AI began our "debate" with the usual Western propaganda talking points: Putin is a monster bent on restoring Russian empire, and so on. I replied that the U.S. had always planned on "regime change" in Russia. This strategy was described in detail in the 2019 Rand Corporation report on "over-extending Russia." It explained that by forcing Russia into a war in Ukraine, by repeatedly ignoring NATO red lines, it would weaken Russia. This would allow the U.S. to seize control of Russia's vast natural wealth.
The rest of the world is not stupid. China and the other BRICS nations are trying to create a multipolar world in which this kind of behavior cannot succeed.
Thank you for this great piece. The VAR truly is a beautiful illustration of so many abstract STS concepts. À sociotechnical system through and through. I particularly appreciate the question of what it means for VAR to “work” and who decides what that answer will be. I will use this piece in the courses I teach!
I’m on a conspiracy tip that David Beckham in all the commercials is an AI model or is almost completely AI airbrushed
Quick note: no such thing as watching "too much" World Cup.
"VAR may hold up matches, de-beautify the beautiful game, and incur an overwhelming majority of fans' hatred, but at least it's not doing anything particularly meaningful, either. So what is VAR doing, then? The first we already hit on - it is, in theory, helping to protect the credibility of the leagues in charge of officiating football matches, as well as their profit streams.": In other words ...
... it's Credibility Theater. Like Security Theater at airports where, for example, containers of obviously harmless liquids are routinely confiscated in the name of thwarting "terrorism"*, it's absurd and irrelevant to its ostensible purpose, but it's a show of Doing Something about a Serious Problem. Erving Goffman famously argued that much behavior by individuals has a performative character, but that goes even more for institutions, especially large ones, whose bosses tend to be "truth-challenged" to begin with.
*Meanwhile, continuing mass murder in the Middle East, among other places, assures there will be no shortage of aspiring "terrorists" for many years to come.
The history of fencing contains both interesting parallels and differences.
Before the modern Olympics, rising nationalism, and the increasing corruption induced by international celebrity, fencing was a "gentleman's" sport that had a regular column in all of the best newspapers. Fencing bouts were judged by a jury of four directors, and the fencers themselves were expected to acknowledge fair touches. Fencing had to be visually clean and elegant with intelligible phrases so that directors or spectators could clearly see hits land. It was dramatic and aesthetically quite beautiful and was recognized as such in its time.
Celebrity, nationalism, and the Olympics crept in and the latter-day chivalric code of fencing corroded. Fencers stopped conceding points against them and juries were simply bribed. People complained that fencing had become a sport of "four blind men and a liar". These accusations were largely true and so the entire sport suffered a massive credibility problem. FIE (fencing's FIFA) introduced a technological innovation to take the human element out of it: electronic scoring. Fencing weapons and clothing were electrified. When a touch landed that met some basic physical qualifications, a circuit would be complete, the buzzer would sound, and a touch was proven.
Unlike VAR (or so it seems) this change was actually objective and accurate. But it completely destroyed the aesthetics and legibility of the sport. It's almost unwatchable for most people and now it has nothing in common with its classical roots. A fencing phrase now consists of two essentially simultaneous touches, leaving the referee to sort the technical arcana of which fencer actually had "right of way", that is, which fencer was eligible to make a touch in the first place. Electrification distorted the physics of the game as well: when you think of swordplay you probably think of cutting and thrusting. After electrification, one of the most efficient ways to land a touch is to use your foil like a whip. This technique is called a "flick" and it looks nothing like swordplay whatsoever.
The technology was largely hated by spectators. The game changed and people abandoned watching it. Fencing has never recovered its cultural cache.
I'm not a football (soccer) fan but it's easy to see the pattern. Technology is introduced to solve the problems global capitalism and international competition has caused. This technology interrupts the flow and legibility of the game, exsanguinating the human drama and replacing it with arcane technological adjudication. At least in fencing's case the technology itself basically works. VAR looks like a complete disaster.
I find this one a little too forced, both in a general sense and even more with the AI comparison. VAR is a tool; it can be either used well or badly. Most of the cases point to people using it badly. Sometimes the root problem is not in the VAR, but already in the rules that are badly conceived and would need rewriting.
As for the favouritism towards some teams over the others, unfortunately it does look like it and it stinks. Colonialism goes on in a new form one could say... Some form of favouritism has, to some extent, always been part of the game before the VAR era, and still is: referees not treating the superstars like other players (“Messi? Nah, he does not commit fouls, not really, come on… I can’t give him a red, can I?”). On the one hand you want to see the extra gifted players in action, on the other hand the other team that strives to win does not really care and would like to see the fair application of the rules for everyone… And so would I. Fairness is important.
Not sure about the survey as well. I find it a bit hard to believe that majority of people would actually be for completely eliminating VAR use. It is one thing to ask “Is the game less enjoyable with the VAR” and another to ask “Would you be for eliminating the VAR altogether”… If used properly, it can (and did) spot a lot of unjust decisions. I believe we should be able to find ways to get there; sometimes it takes a while to find the right balance (I am not excusing the blatant and obvious errors VARs have made, it surely does not help their case). And I also believe that after going back people would find themselves in situation where they would be sorry that we do not have VAR anymore…
The referees could also use their common sense and sometimes keep more with the spirit of the game than rigidly stick to the rules (which of course in a sense weakens the rules and invites other problems). Let’s take the example of the Swiss player getting the second yellow for simulation. At first, it was the Argentinian player getting a yellow card; in the real time it seemed like a foul. But the video footage shows that the Swiss player actually dives (which I do not understand really)… So would it be fair to give the yellow to the Argentinian player? It would not, I assume we would all agree. Would people really have inspected this one situation if VAR had not brought it up? I am not sure. In the end, the ref followed the rules (which probably might need adjusting) to the letter and gave him a second yellow; since he – unfortunately – already got one before (did he really deserved that one?), it meant a red for him and of course it had a big impact on the game. The ref could have – and should have in my opinion – made a judgment call and decided not to him the yellow…
The case of the USA player Balogun: here he might have seriously injured the opponent and today’s rules say that this is a red card. In the real time you would not really see it clearly since there is no “aggressive challenge”, they just both run trying to get to the ball… In the slowed replay it does look horrible. It does not seem intentional and I do not see any uncontrolled aggressivity; sometimes you cannot quite control all the movements and things just happened and sometimes they do have bad consequences, like a serious injury of the opponent. On the other hand, if Balogun did not pursue the ball, the situation would not have happened at all… But of course he has to pursue it... So is it fair that you almost break another players’s leg (and possibly eliminate him from the game for weeks or months), but do not get a red card? I would say no. Would I give him a red in this instance? Probably not (I believe the Bosnian player could have gone on, could he not?). At least in this case one cannot say that VAR was biased towards the “more preferable team” (in the eyes of FIFA)…
There used to be some nasty challenges with the challenging player always claiming “I got the ball” (and some still use this claim) while almost breaking someone’s leg in the follow-through… That is why the rules were adjusted to deal with similar situations and also some rules for “serious foul play/injury” were introduced where intentionality does not really come into consideration I suppose (who can decide whether there was intention or not, in some cases it seems to be quite difficult).
Now I am going to say something for which I might be ridiculed… which is sort of part of the problem. Why do players simulate without any remorse? Or, if a player touches a ball going over the line and referee misses it, should the player not come clean? Same thing if he plays with a hand etc. Why does the English team not admit that the ball touched the cable? Did they not see it? It is “win at all costs”. Players always claiming “it’s our ball” even when it is obvious that it is not… People behaving dishonestly right in front our eyes and no one really calling it out… where is personal integrity and character? Nowhere to be found or at least very scarce. And that is, I think, one of the big causes of our problems today, because, in the end, there is always a person behind every decision (an investor/manager/politician that does not care for the environment and people/takes a bribe/looks away…).
Let's grant it's a tool only. But if a tool is meant to improve the result, and it doesn't, isn't it a pretty worthless tool?
And if the issue is human bias, well, if bias is effecting the non VAR process and the VAR process, it's unclear to me how the technology is particularly an improvement.
Tech always has to be evaluated in social contexts. It's why Brian emphasized it as a sociotechnical construct. It's also why he emphasized social or political reasons for its adoption--if it isn't particularly improving the experience or the results, one is forced to look for other reasons for its continued persistence that are non technical.
And this is why the comparison with AI is apt (although the obvious social consequences of costly adoption of AI are far more important).
[writing in a friendly, discussion-inviting, non-confrontational way] I did see Brian’s points that you pointed out, but I just do not quite agree with them.
Let’s go back some years, before the TV broadcast. The only spectators were people at the stadium; then, just as now, mistakes were made by the refs, but there was no way to go back and review the situations, so any disputes about correctness of the decisions were only opinions with no solid backing. This changed with the television, recording of the games and possibility of replays, especially after the number of cameras (and thus viewing angles) rose and quality of the image improved so that you can see everything. This marks what we could call “the first technology invasion” that influenced the world of football. Now you had many more spectators, all with a better view than the referee. And of course so much more commercial interests to be exploited…
The referee cannot see it all, that is true in theory and in practice, especially with today’s game speed and physicality. So what could be done? Enter VAR (the reasons for the VAR introduction are well stated in the article, but see also Patrikc’s comment down here, https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/what-var-tells-us-about-ai/comment/294292924, that goes more into the reasons why VAR was introduced).
What is actually VAR? To be precise, it is not just a tool, but rather another person with a tool: the TV screen (or several people with many screens it seems now). So another person – fallible and corruptible – was introduced into the refereeing process. The difference is that VAR actually can, compared to the regular referee, solve many situations fairly and justly – definitely in theory, the problem is with the practice. Here at least two things can go wrong: the rules are not well written or the refs make bad decisions.
My point regarding VAR was that it is, in theory, a useful process (an improvement I would say) that can prevent instances of blatant injustice – and these moments certainly do enrage people and I believe that most of us want the games to be as fair as possible. Yes, there were mistakes/biases before VAR and there are mistakes/biases with VAR, but different mistakes – and I still believe that we can get to the point when the process works also in practice, free of those mistakes that we see in the latest World Cup.
I do not agree with the view that VAR is a worthless tool; just from watching games, I’d say it makes the decisions fairer in 90 % of the use, the rest are (sometimes truly unfathomable and rightly criticised) mistakes. Of course, the controversial decisions, like the ones that unfortunately plague the latest tournament, are the ones that are most talked about (and might easily skew the polls), but they are exceptions, not the rule, and it would not be wise, in my opinion, to judge the VAR just on them.
I do not think the VAR was pushed as a technological solution for the technology’s sake and I do not agree with Brian’s statement “It’s a ubiquitous automation and surveillance system, adopted and maintained by those in positions of power with promises of progress and improvement”. It was supposed to help and resolve certain situations (in the given social context), and I believe, one day, it will do so without too many controversies.
Could we go back and get rid of the VAR, of this “second technology invasion”? Or even stop the TV broadcasts? Sure. Would there be exactly the same issues as before. Most certainly… Every path will have its pros and cons.
A little aside note: Do I shake my head when a goal is disallowed because of a one centimetre offside? Yes, I do. Or because the sensor in the ball is triggered, even though the path of the ball did not change a bit? Yes, I do.
As for the experience of the game: I suppose it is different for the people at the stadium and for those watching TV; I would guess that the first ones would probably be more critical of the VAR (“it breaks the flow”) than the TV spectators.
Am I a promoter of the VAR? Not really. I could live without it. Just as I could live without the endless commercialization of the game…
(sorry for another long comment)
Just to address some of your points in the final paragraph, as a game designer/professor:
Players cheat, bend rules, behave in non-ethical ways in every competitive game ever designed in which winning has positive "real life" outcomes. Further, a game's rules are only truly respected if they are enforceable by every player. Every time there is an outside force in charge, players will try to win a competitive advantage over others and will risk negative reprecussions regardless of the potential severity of the punishment.
In football/soccer there's the added component of there being one main ref and 2 line refs for an enormous pitch and a sport in which there's quite a bit of contact, so players have learned to exaggerate to "aid" refs in calling fouls. This often goes too far (see above) but is actually very understandable for legitimate instances because while some of the contact may not literally cause a player to fall and feel pain, it does disrupt balance or impedes actions because it's hard to control a sphere with your feet while also running. Fans and practioners of the sport know this.
Two of the videos are unavailable:
"The uploader has not made this video available in your country".
Please provide links (or the gist).
Oh, and the red card for the U.S. player was absolutely justified, and he should have been banned from the game. He stamped his foot down on the other team's player, with intention. So much for fair play.
I agree that the red card was justified and it would not be a controversial punishment in most leagues. It's maybe a bit harsh because it wasn't intentional, but a yellow would be very soft.
I think at least some of the comments pushing back on the applicability of the VAR argument to AI may be because you didn't explicitly define accountability sinks. From "The Unaccountability Machine" book description at https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo252799883.html:
"accountability sinks: systems in which decisions are delegated to a complex rule book or set of standard procedures, making it impossible to identify the source of mistakes when they happen. In our increasingly unhuman world—lives dominated by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and large organizations—these accountability sinks produce more than just aggravation. They make life and economy unknowable—a black box for no reason."
In this world cup there were several instances of referee teams justifiying decisions that made little sense in the context of the logic, tradition, and purpose of the game, strongly influencing the outcome of games. They were able to do so by offloading accountability to complicated rules or systems like VAR or new sensors on the ball (which can easily malfunction or encounter out-of-specification conditions) . The reason this line of thought clearly applies to AI, at least in the case of LLMs and other neural network architectures, is that its workings are very much a black box, so it is very easy to simply shift accountability to the machine, especially when it confirms your biases or supports your agenda.
The reason we need humans making important decisions in complex situations involving other people (we are not talking about thermostats here) is not just so that they can catch things the systems are not able to (a reverse centaur situation in Cory Doctorow's terminology); it is so that we can maximize accountability and keep our focus on values rather than rules or metrics (what Thi Nguyen would call "value capture"). Tools and automation can help support decision-making, but can never completely replace it without incurring a strong accountability trade-off.
I enjoyed the VAR analysis, particularly the argument that automation does not eliminate human judgment or institutional bias—it can simply relocate that judgment into a less visible technical system. Your examples make that case very well.
I’m less persuaded by the final comparison with AI. The VAR case is tightly argued around one defined system, one governing institution, and a visible pattern of contested decisions. The claim that AI broadly operates against the will of most people for the benefit of a small elite arrives much faster and without the same evidentiary structure.
There is an important argument to make that AI may be moving through society too quickly because hyperscalers, executives, and investors have powerful incentives to accelerate adoption. But that argument deserves its own analysis. Attaching it to VAR by analogy risks weakening what is otherwise a very strong examination of how technological systems can obscure rather than remove institutional choices.
And Paris during the World Cup sounds like a pretty wonderful place from which to watch the argument unfold.
I don't watch football , but I live in Argentina, so I hear every goal. But this is very disappointing news. I have respect for Messi, but if Egypt deserved the goal, and possibly win, it's very sad that Messi will end his career on a high note, because AI stepped in to help it along. Everything is becoming fake, driven by metrics, and it makes me ill.
Baseball fan here, have often wondered if Yankees especially benefited from officiating. Eg in 1996, blatant fan interference gave them a HR, led to first title in 18 years
I agree to the general argument. And I don't like the current VAR and its rules either.
But you also mentioned why the system was introduced: the gap between referees on the pitch and a dozen UHD cameras with super slow-motion overanalysing every decision by them.
Especially in high-stake games, the media (AFAIK in Germany and the UK) and/or fans often blamed referees (often in unhinged intensity!) for things they couldn't realistically see from their position: close complex off-sides, some hidden fouls or player acting fouled, a hidden hand-play, millimeter-behind-the-line calls and so on.
So VAR was a reaction to that massive pressure on the referees. So where is the solution for that problem that is better than VAR? Because they deserve a solution...
Great article, Brian. Very interesting. One thing, and it's got nothing to do with VAR or AI, but 'football' is also football to us plebes. Only in the USA is it downgraded to 'soccer'. :-)
I'm not sure I buy this as an AI piece. Yes, VAR is controversial, but then so was Hawkeye when it came into tennis and cricket. In the former case, plenty of line judges have lost their jobs, so perhaps that's less of a stretch? All sports technology is controversial - see the debate about running shoes, which currently doesn't have any IT component as far as I'm aware.
Totally agree, Brian.
One could argue that the only conflict more serious than sport is war.
Today I went toe to toe with AI in a debate over the war in Ukraine—the one we call "Russia's war" that is, in fact, U.S. imperialism's war.
According to AI, I won. My initial query involved the late, great British historian A.J.P. Taylor's book "The Origins of the Second World War." He argued that Hitler was not so much an ideologue as an opportunist. The same has been said, invoking Taylor, about Putin, who is, in fact, neither ideologue nor opportunist but a man trying to protect Russia from well-documented though never reported facts about the purpose of the West's relentless NATO expansion.
AI began our "debate" with the usual Western propaganda talking points: Putin is a monster bent on restoring Russian empire, and so on. I replied that the U.S. had always planned on "regime change" in Russia. This strategy was described in detail in the 2019 Rand Corporation report on "over-extending Russia." It explained that by forcing Russia into a war in Ukraine, by repeatedly ignoring NATO red lines, it would weaken Russia. This would allow the U.S. to seize control of Russia's vast natural wealth.
The rest of the world is not stupid. China and the other BRICS nations are trying to create a multipolar world in which this kind of behavior cannot succeed.
Thank you for this great piece. The VAR truly is a beautiful illustration of so many abstract STS concepts. À sociotechnical system through and through. I particularly appreciate the question of what it means for VAR to “work” and who decides what that answer will be. I will use this piece in the courses I teach!