Findings · how the record is kept today
Not as a fallback. As the official record — the document a governing body and a disciplinary panel actually act on.
Football
The referee writes the player’s details in a small notebook — which is why a caution is called a booking. Cautions and dismissals are then re-entered after the match into the FA’s Whole Game System or FA Full-Time.
Source: The FA, Law 5 and referee reporting guidance
Basketball
FIBA’s Table Officials Manual makes the scoresheet the official record of the game. A scorer, assistant scorer, timer and shot-clock operator tally baskets, fouls and timeouts by hand; scorers are told to carry notice paper for incidents.
Source: FIBA Table Officials Manual v3.2
Tennis
Chair umpires already score point-by-point on a dedicated tablet, and the ITF delivers live data straight from the chair at more than 1,200 Pro Circuit events a year. It works — it is just one sport, one chair, one proprietary stack.
Source: ITF Pro Circuit live scoring; Wimbledon officiating
Football and basketball keep the legal record of a match on paper. Tennis shows exactly what happens when you put it on a device instead — and nobody has generalised that beyond one sport.
The premise
Cameras now decide where the ball landed. A human still writes down who scored it, who assisted, who was cautioned and why — and in most of world sport, still writes it on paper.
What changed
Read it top to bottom. The point is the weight and consistency of investment across five different sports — and that every entry decides a call rather than keeps a record.
Premier League adopts Hawk-Eye across all 20 clubs. 14 cameras; the referee’s watch buzzes in under a second.
Every reviewable call routed through one facility in Secaucus, New Jersey.
Live ELC trialled at the Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan.
FIFA deploys SAOT at the men’s World Cup in Qatar.
FIFPRO launches its Charter of Player Data Rights, setting global standards for how player data is held.
3D optical tracking of every player and the ball, from the 2023–24 season.
ATP adopts ELC Live tour-wide; Wimbledon follows. Premier League adds SAOT in April.
Six 8K cameras measure the line to gain, run from the league’s central officiating centre.
Sources: Premier League; ATP Tour; NBA; FIFA; FIFPRO; ESPN; Sky Sports.
The gap
What cameras answer
Geometry. Answered definitively, in under a second.
What nothing answers
Judgement and record. No camera writes these down. An official does.
The cost
Handed over in the changing room, photographed if you are lucky.
Cautions, substitutions and scorers, written between restarts.
Typed into a league portal hours later, from memory and shorthand.
Passed between club secretary, registrar and federation.
Four hops
Between the moment a referee raises a card and the moment a governing body can act on it.
Every hop is a chance to lose a caution, mis-attribute an assist, or delay a suspension — and none of them leave an audit trail.
