Will AI replace Umpires, Referees, and Other Sports Officials?
AI reaches little of this job’s work.
16/100
Low exposure
More exposed to AI than 29% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 20% of the work
What the job involves
Officiate at competitive athletic or sporting events. Detect infractions of rules and decide penalties according to established regulations. Includes all sporting officials, referees, and competition judges.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(4)
- Teach and explain the rules and regulations governing a specific sport.
- Research and study players and teams to anticipate issues that might arise in future engagements.
- Verify credentials of participants in sporting events, and make other qualifying determinations, such as starting order or handicap number.
- Compile scores and other athletic records.
Out of reach(12)
- Officiate at sporting events, games, or competitions, to maintain standards of play and to ensure that game rules are observed.
- Confer with other sporting officials, coaches, players, and facility managers to provide information, coordinate activities, and discuss problems.
- Signal participants or other officials to make them aware of infractions or to otherwise regulate play or competition.
- Inspect game sites for compliance with regulations or safety requirements.
- Inspect sporting equipment or examine participants to ensure compliance with event and safety regulations.
and 7 more
Also called
Referee · Umpire · Baseball Umpire · Handicapper · Paddock Judge · Pit Steward · Racing Secretary · Basketball Referee
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics