Judges to football matches in Russia will be appointed by artificial intelligence

On September 24, 2020 the Football Union of Russia (FUR) and the Higher School of Economics (HSE) concluded the memorandum of long-term cooperation within which they agreed about implementation of a smart system for appointment of judges to matches.

Before arbitrators were appointed to football matches in the manual mode — the department of refereeing of RFU is responsible for it. The computer system with artificial intelligence will allow to consider all possible restrictions (the rating of the judge, complexity of a match, logistic restrictions, presence of injuries, regional accessory of the referee, indicators of the current form, progress on weekly theoretical occupations, quality of studying of English, etc.) and to pick up optimum allocation of panels of judges for matches. The solution is based on Gale-Shapley's algorithm, it will exclude a human factor at appointment of judges.

Judges to football matches in Russia will be appointed by AI

We pay huge attention to development of the Russian refereeing, we aim to make it more transparent and qualitative. Together with Laboratory of researches of sport of the HSE we developed a recommendatory system which using Gale-Shapley's algorithm will allow to select the most suitable judges on each specific match — the secretary general of RFU Alexander Alayev noted.

By September 24, 2020 the test version of this recommendatory system is prepared. After testing of RFU is going to develop the user interface which will allow to obtain data on the calendar of competitions, changes in matches, estimates of the inspectors set later matches to judges and other events and data necessary for work of model.

Also refining of rules of determination of rating of matches taking into account a tournament situation is planned that is an important factor for correct work of a recommendatory system.

It is noted that a new system has advisory nature, the final decision to destination of judges on matches remains behind department of refereeing of RFU.^[1]

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