Being a Premier League referee is a pretty difficult job, particularly when any mistake can be criticised by millions of people. While the job may be quite difficult, do referees get compensated for this?
Is being a Premier League referee a full-time job? Yes, being a Premier League referee is a full-time job. Premier League referees became professional in 2001, meaning that they are paid enough from refereeing that they don’t need to take another job.
For the first nine years of the Premier League, referees were not professional, meaning that it was not a full-time job. Refs had to find another job as the pay from refereeing the Premier League was not enough.
That all changed in 2001 when there was an overhaul by the FA about how the referees are trained and developed. This overhaul allowed the refs to be paid professionally for the first time in the league’s history. The referees were able to go full-time because of the financial incentives.
At the time of this overhaul, the FA employed 24 full-time Premier League referees as well as 48 assistant refs. The referees were being paid around £33,000 which means they are professional as this is a full-time wage. Assistant referees are not usually paid as much, but they still earn enough to be full-time.
While it may seem like all of the work that referees do is on matchday, there is a lot more to refereeing and this is why the Premier League wanted to make referees professional.
Do Referees have another job?
While there are many leagues like the Premier League that employ full-time referees, not every referee is professional. Semi-pro or amateur referees are not paid enough from refereeing to do it full-time. In this scenario, referees will have another job. Most amateur referees will only be paid between £20 and £40 for a match, nowhere near enough for a full-time job. It means they need another job.
That job itself does still need to accompany refereeing, so there are certain professions which are very difficult to follow if you want to do refereeing alongside the profession. These jobs are often looked at as “day jobs”, with refereeing often happening in the evening or on weekends, rarely during a normal work week.
In terms of the English system, there are different levels of referees and those levels affect how much you are paid. There are three select groups which are professional, known as international, select group and select group 2. International is the referees on the FIFA list who also referee outside of the UK.
Select Group 1 is the referees for the Premier League, with select group 2 being the professional referees for the Championship. It is much more common for referees lower down to have another job as they are not professionals. It is extremely rare for a referee outside of the Football League to be professional, especially as the players outside of the Football League will likely have another job, so the referees do too.
What age do Premier League referees retire?
There is no specific age limit to be a Premier League referee, meaning that you can referee as long as you want. But the job can be very physically demanding, trying to keep up with the play of 20 and 30-year-old players. People often don’t think about how physical the job can be.
It is why most Premier League referees retire in the years after they turn 50. At that point, it is difficult to keep up with play. There are also a lot more incentives to retire as referees have different options when they retire. Some stay with the official board of their country, often as a coach or manager of a group of referees.
Some referees retire and instead go to jobs in the media as their input is often wanted by organisations like Sky and BT. Often commentators or analysts have a referee in the studio to talk about some of the big decisions of the weekend.
In the past, there was a maximum age limit for referees. Before 2000, the oldest you could be as a Premier League referee was 48. You could not referee if you were older than 48. This was until 2001 when there was a refereeing overhaul by the FA. One of those rules that was overhauled was getting rid of the maximum age, which is still the case today.
What do Premier League referees do during the week?
You might think that refereeing in the Premier League is only about the weekends, but there is a lot that the professional referees do during the week to prepare for the weekends games.
1. Training
One of the things that may surprise you to hear is that Premier League referees usually have multiple training sessions a week that include a mix of high intensity, weights, speed, recovery and endurance. Referees need to be in the best physical condition and so they have to train just like the players do.
2. Referee
The very top level of Premier League referees will usually be recruited to referee on the continent. These referees will be on FIFA’s list to referee outside of their country, with refs from all over the world officiating in international competitions. Anthony Taylor and Michael Oliver are two of the current Premier League referees who also work in the Champions League.
They will also at times be needed to referee in domestic competitions. With competitions like the FA and EFL Cup usually happening during the week, Premier League referees are often called upon for these matches, particularly when it gets to later in the competition.
3. Fill in the match report
After each match that they officiate, a Premier League referee has to submit his post-match report, as well as sending over his heart rate data to the Sports Scientist team at the Professional Game Match Officials Board, which is the body responsible for all professional English referees. These reports need to be accurate as referees’ performance is scrutinised by the PGMOL