Competition regulation in youth sports: by referees? Why and how?

The organisation of youth sport competitions in team sports rests in the hands of adults: coaches, managers and referees. Dutch sports associations offer training programmes for referees to learn and apply the game rules. However, scholarly attention paid to the development and implementation of policies that govern referees has been minimal. The perspectives of national sports policy administrators, who are responsible for educating referees and the organisation of youth sport competition, have received little scholarly consideration. The purpose of this study was to explore how policy administrators view game regulation and the (added) value of referees in youth sports (13+). We drew on the constructs of rationalities and technologies that are part of governmentality to explore how sport policy administrators think (rationalities) and implement (technologies) to manage policies governing referees. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 policy administrators from six team sports about their perspectives on the complexities of policies regulating referees. The interviews revealed three main themes: 1) the need for a referee, 2) the regulation of athlete behaviour and 3) the training, supervision and support of referees. The results reveal that policy administrators are governed by the way organised sport has been structured in the Netherlands. Policy administrators acknowledge their influence is limited concerning locally organised youth sport competition, but they believe that the current structure does not need to be changed and that the function of referees should be preserved for this age group.