A recent survey commissioned by leading bookmaker Coral has revealed that despite many controversial decisions being made, 53% of football fans believe that the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee system (VAR) has had a positive impact on football. The research, which polled more than a thousand football fans, found that the often controversial introduction of VAR has largely met with a positive reaction, with just 39% of those questioned believing its impact to be negative.
The findings from Coral also suggest that the public are still in favour of using VAR across a number of different incidents within a match. 52% of football fans believe VAR should continue to be used to make rulings on goal decisions, 52% also think it should be continued to rule on red card decisions, while 51% support it being used to make rulings on penalties.
The findings from the bookmaker come after VAR chief Neil Swarbrick’s comments in which he suggested that VAR was working “as we wanted” and offered a “seven out of 10” rating for VAR’s current performance. Although he was much maligned for these comments, with many pundits, punters and players voicing their frustrations with the technology following a string of controversial decisions, these survey results suggest Mr Swarbrick wasn’t far off the opinion of the wider British public.
David Stevens, Head of PR at Coral says:
The introduction of VAR has been surrounded by controversy, so it’s perhaps surprising that the results of this survey saw more than half of those fans polled saying it has had a positive impact on the sport. With the Premier League also announcing that more information will be provided to fans inside stadiums, it seems odds-on that VAR is here to stay.
