This book analyzes the 2018 and 2019 men's and women's World Cups to understand how the use of Video Assistant Referees (VAR) affected each tournament. Unlike goal technology, where the decision is entirely left to the machine's algorithm, the VAR still has a human component, making it prone to errors and controversies. Building on the theories of justice, the book quantitatively reviews event-level data while using a historical perspective to depict a novel approach to the effects of VAR in major soccer tournaments. The six chapters examine the use of VAR, discuss when it was not used (but maybe should have been used), and explore how the World Cup evolved with the new technology. Combining the VAR events of 2018 and 2019 with comparable situations from past World Cups guides the reader into debating the meaning of justice and the potential of ever achieving fairness in soccer.

Explores the use of modern technology in sports Uses event-level data and statistical analysis to explore how the 2018 and 2019 World Cups evolved with the use of VAR Explores important themes of justice, fairness, and technology in the world's most global sport: soccer

Autorentext

Jorge Tovar is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia. He has held previous appointments as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University (2011) and as the Tinker-NAVE Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2020).

Inhalt
1.Introduction.- 2.Justice and fairness.- 3.The debate of VAR.- 4.VAR in Russia 2018 and France 2019.- 5.Why and how to improve VAR.- 6.Conclusion.