A football future without referees, just cameras?

Referees could be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) one day, reckons Livingston manager David Martindale.

Semi-automated offside technology has been around since the 2022 World Cup and Martindale is predicting further advances to reduce human error.

The Scottish Premiership is nearing three years of video assistant referees (VAR) but does not yet have goal-line or offside technology, with the cost proving prohibitive.

In May 2024, the Scottish FA's VAR independent review panel (IRP) found 90.3% of on-field decisions were deemed correct, rising to 97.8% when including VAR interventions.

However, this season has already thrown up several VAR controversies, with Martindale saying there were "two or three really poor decisions" last weekend alone.

Livingston have returned to the top flight, having spent the last campaign in the Championship where VAR is not utilised.

"I'm not sure VAR is helping the game now," said Martindale. "You're using the footage, but it's the personnel that's then interpreting that footage, so that's a big problem for me.

"I think I'm in a great position to speak about this because I was VAR previously, no VAR, and VAR again.

"What was the first goal this season? Falkirk, here and we score, and I'm running away, I'm up the touchline celebrating with my players, and I'm like, 'you might not even get this goal'.

"That elation, the drop off, it's terrible. Then by the time you're given the goal, can you lose that moment? Is that not what football's all about?"

'We need to bring more technology in'

Livingston pay "more than £100,000" a season towards the running costs of the VAR system and Martindale is warning of increasing expenditure.

He added: "One of my biggest concerns originally when we voted for this - and I was a big advocate of it - I felt it would have helped the game, was how much it was going to cost, and secondly, how much is that cost going to go up every year?

"The costs keep going up and up, but to make the game better we need to spend more money, because we need to bring more technology in.

"Where does it end? Do you end with no officials on the park and it's artificial intelligence that's refereeing the game? Because that's where it's going to go.

"Not robots, just artificial intelligence. Cameras videoing the game. Cameras making the decisions. You look at AI, there's data that says by 2030 the evolution of AI is going to be much more powerful than the human race. Not just a human, the full global human race."

Asked if managers would also be redundant in an AI dominated world, Martindale joked: "Hopefully not, then I can go back on the building site."