Challenging ocularcentric fairness assumptions of the video assistant referee (VAR) system in football

ABSTRACT

Football’s video assistant referee (VAR) system is based on the assumption that reviewing plays on a screen refines precision and accuracy, resulting in fairer calls. The system thus reinforces ocularcentrism, the Western, modernist, rationalist thinking that privileges sight over other senses. Based on Turkey, I investigate the stakes involved in reinforcing and the conceptual opportunities opened in challenging these assumptions. The VAR system’s ocularcentrism, as foreshadowed by televisation, creates an ocular mode separate from that of the field by muting it and visually dissecting its plays. This leads to “false transparency” along with novel relations and socialities between referees, VARs and players. As such, rather than carrying referees to objectively based or clean moments of fairness, the VAR process in fact identifies the complex socialness of fairness itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Fairness
• ocularcentrism
• football
• false transparency
• video assistant referee
• Turkey

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my referee interlocutors, who took the time to speak with me and recount their stories. I thank Can Evren and Thomas Ross Griffin for their insightful remarks on various drafts of this article as well as the anonymous reviewers of Senses and Society, editor Michael Bull and editorial assistant Jayanthan Sriram for their support and helpful feedback during the publication process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. As with other footballing and refereeing conventions (see Nuhrat 2013 for a discussion), there are divergences between contexts with respect to how the VAR system is utilized. For example, VAR decisions in Turkey take much longer to finalize as compared to England, perhaps related to the differences in how inclined referees in the two contexts are willing to interrupt the game. While my insights here are gathered from my work on football in Turkey, my arguments pertain to the larger theoretical implications and premises of the VAR system. As such, I contend that they are relevant across different footballing contexts.

2. The 2021 interviews (twice with three referees and once with the other two) were all conducted online due to COVID-19 restrictions.

3. While “positioning” does not necessarily relate to vision, my referee interlocutors used the term with this reference.

4. I use the “he” pronoun since all referees and VARs during the time of research in Turkey were men.

5. All names are pseudonyms to ensure anonymity.