Are decisions from a referee immutable?

pasta_paul

Let's imagine a referee that obviously favours one team, making evidently biased decisions. I am talking about things like deciding a penalty without any players having interacted, or showing a red card to half of the team out of nowhere. I understand that he or she is god on the field during the match, but can these decisions be challenged after the fact -- and discarding the result of the match?

Originally asked by WoJ on Stack Exchange (sports) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

A referee's decisions are final, so unless you can show a misapplication of the LoTG, corruption, or some other serious integrity issue, the result stands. They are not immutable, but they are very hard to get overturned. Law 5 The decisions of the referee regarding facts connected with play, including whether or not a goal is scored and the result of the match, are final. If the referee says they judged a situation as violent conduct, serious foul play, abusive language, whatever, the match result normally survives that. A bad factual decision is usually just that... bad, but final. The competition might later cancel a red card suspension, or punish the referee, but the result usually...

Full answer by dly: https://sports.stackexchange.com/a/30318 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Need it done for your business? UphillTech.