Estonia & VAR - data comparison 2023 vs 2024

We @RefPal have now had the chance to work with 4 countries using VAR with Azerbaijan, Kuwait, Latvia and Estonia. Some of our other partners are in the process of implementing VAR (like Finland and Faroes) and some of our new partners (soon to be published) will also be VAR countries.

As the Estonian season reaches its halfway mark of season 2024, it is a suitable time to make some comparisons of how we are faring as compared to our first season in 2023.

RefPal has been playing an instrumental part in our VAR development from 3 aspects:

1. 1. All the decisions made by VAR’s are in our system and have an official mark meaning we have exact data on our decision accuracy and also our missed interventions. All of our referees analyze each decision taken during the matchday also from VAR intervention aspects.
2. 2. We have developed a tool VARVIS which enables us to track time of each review and intervention while also sending graphics to TV broadcast and stadium screens - operated by AVAR using an easy LED lighted keyboard.
3. 3. We are running a weekly VAR seminar in RefPal to highlight the positives and possible improvement aspects of VAR work based on review process, camera use, speed and other topics we can see from our VAR output provided by VOGO.

Final remark before we go into the data - Estonia is using a VAR light system with no replay operator (Video match official is working with the videos himself) as we only have 6 cameras per match. We are not using the offside line technology so there are far less interventions for offsides.

Comparison between 2023 and 2024

Data point	2023	2024
Games played	180	94
Nr of reviews	830	311
Nr of reviews per game	4,6	3,3
VAR delay per game in sec	86	60
VAR interventions	67	35
Nr of interventions per game	2,7	2,7
Nr of missed interventions	25	7
Nr of missed int. per game	7,3	13,4
Wrong interventions	8 (4*)	5 (2*)

*Saved by the referee

Interventions (both done and missed) by topic:

Data point	2023	2024
Penalties	53	31
Red cards	53	31
Goals	53	31
Mistaken identity	0	0

As a conclusion, the Estonian VAR Light project has become more accurate and faster in our second season. There is still room for plenty of improvement though, especially as the wrong interventions are the ones that cause the most noise in the media and discontent amongst the teams and the fans. We @RefPal are proud to be a part of this process and helping our referees to improve their skills.