The referee variable,quantified.
Cards, penalties, added time, crew behaviour — officiating moves markets and models, yet most datasets treat the referee as a name string. Referee.Observer is the structured, continuously updated source for the match's 23rd data point.
Evaluation access available for qualified data teams.
Built for models, not just pages.
Every number on the site is available as structured data.
Deep historical dataset
Per-official appearance history with roles, competitions, discipline counts and crew composition — the training data for card-market, booking-points and totals models.
Tendency features
Cards per match, penalty frequency, home/away splits and season trends, pre-computed per official and per competition — ready to join onto your fixture feed.
Appointment feed
Officials are a late-breaking signal: appointments land here within hours of federation publication — often before they reach mainstream fixture feeds.
REST API
Documented, versioned endpoints for officials, matches, crews and statistics, with stable IDs and cross-language name normalization built in.
Bulk exports
Full-history snapshots in JSON or CSV for backtesting and research, with documented schema and change logs.
Entity resolution done for you
One official = one record across transliterations, federations and competitions — the dedup work that usually eats your first sprint is already done.
Responsible licensing
Clear commercial terms per use case — betting analytics, media, fantasy, academic. We license data about match officials' public professional activity only.
From sample to production
Evaluate
Get evaluation API access and a sample export against your competitions of interest.
Integrate
Stable IDs and documented schemas — most teams are joined to their fixture data within days.
Go live
Production keys, SLA and the appointment feed for your markets or newsroom.
Frequently asked questions
Why does referee data matter for betting models?+
Officials differ measurably in cards shown, penalties awarded and added time played. For bookings markets especially, the appointed referee is one of the strongest single pre-match signals — and it arrives late, which is exactly when markets are most sensitive.
What formats and delivery do you support?+
REST API with JSON responses, plus bulk JSON/CSV exports for backtesting. Webhook or polling-based appointment feeds are available on partner plans.
How is the data sourced?+
From official federation and competition appointment records and match sheets, continuously imported, deduplicated and name-normalized. Methodology is public.
Can academics get access?+
Yes — research access with citation terms is available; contact us with your institution and topic.
Add the referee to your model.
Start with the API docs, or tell us your use case and volumes for licensing terms.
Also on Referee.Observer: API documentation · Methodology · For media