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Evidence of referees' national favouritism in rugby

Author

Listed:
  • Lionel Page

    (Westminster and Cambridge)

  • Katie Page

    (London)

Abstract

The present article reports evidence of national favouritism from professional referees in two major sports: Rugby League and Rugby Union. National favouritism can appear when a referee is in charge of a match where one team (and only one) is from his country. For fear of the risk of such favouritism, such situations are avoided in most major sports. In this study we study two specific competitions who depart from this national neutrality" rule: the European Super League in Rugby League (and its second tier competition) and the Super 14 in Rugby Union. In both cases we find strong evidence that referees favour teams from their own nationality, in a way which has a large influence on match results. For these two major competitions, the Super League and the Super 14, we compare how a team performs in situations where the referee both shares their nationality and in situations where the referee comes from a different nationality. We also analyse referees' decisions within matches (such as penalty and try decisions) in a Rugby League competition, the Championship (second tier below the Super League). In both Rugby League and Rugby Union we find strong evidence of national favouritism.

Suggested Citation

  • Lionel Page & Katie Page, 2010. "Evidence of referees' national favouritism in rugby," NCER Working Paper Series 62, National Centre for Econometric Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:qut:auncer:2010_09
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    File URL: http://www.ncer.edu.au/papers/documents/WPNo62.pdf
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Ryan Rodenberg, 2013. "Employee Discipline And Basketball Referees: A Prediction Market Approach," Journal of Prediction Markets, University of Buckingham Press, vol. 7(2), pages 43-54.
    2. Dawson, Peter & Massey, Patrick & Downward, Paul, 2020. "Television match officials, referees, and home advantage: Evidence from the European Rugby Cup," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 443-454.
    3. Delbianco Fernando & Fioravanti Federico & Tohmé Fernando, 2023. "Home advantage and crowd attendance: evidence from rugby during the Covid 19 pandemic," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 19(1), pages 15-26, March.
    4. Rodenberg Ryan, 2011. "Perception ? Reality: Analyzing Specific Allegations of NBA Referee Bias," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 1-13, May.
    5. Thomas Dohmen & Jan Sauermann, 2016. "Referee Bias," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 679-695, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Rugby league; Rugby Union; favouritism;
    All these keywords.

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