Sport, Ethics & Philosophy: Journal of the British Philosophy of Sport Association
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Journal:
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Promoting fairness in sport through performance-enhancing
substances:
An argument for why sport referees ought to ‘be on drugs’
Sports, Ethics & Philosophy: Journal of the British Philosophy of Sport
Association
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Manuscript ID RSEP-2020-0006.R2
Manuscript Type: Original Article
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Keywords: doping, fairness, refereeing, sports ethics, WADA
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Page 1 of 17
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Promoting fairness in sport through performance-enhancing substances:
An argument for why sport referees ought to ‘be on drugs’
Abstract: The debate on the use of performance-enhancing substances or methods to improve
refereeing is underdeveloped in the sport philosophical literature. This contrast with the attention
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scholars have devoted to the use of such substances and methods for athletic purposes. However,
when considered from the perspective of fairness, this differential treatment is problematic. Since
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one of the main concerns with performance-enhancing drugs is their detrimental effect on fairness,
the use of performance-enhancing drugs and methods to improve refereeing, given their positive
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effects on fairness, should have more relevance in the literature. If anti-doping advocates aim to
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protect and promote fairness in sport, they should consider the possibility of using performance-
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enhancing drugs or methods to improve refereeing. In this article, we make an argument for this
possibility and critically discuss some possible objections. We conclude that referees, under certain
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conditions, ought to use doping substances or methods.
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Keywords: doping; ethics; fairness; fair play; refereeing; sports ethics.
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1. Introduction
Refereeing errors are commonplace in professional sport. These errors are not only an important
source of frustration and harm for athletes and spectators, but they also, and more importantly,
result in the unsatisfactory and unfair resolution of sport contests. Poor positioning, cognitive
limitations, and lack of concentration are among the causes of such errors. In baseball, due to
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Sport, Ethics & Philosophy: Journal of the British Philosophy of Sport Association
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cognitive limitations and fatigue, umpires miss roughly 10–15% of their pitch calls behind the plate
(Kim and King 2014). In football, the most common causes of error are the failure to concentrate
on the play (focusing on the ball and legs of the players) and lack of visibility due to poor
positioning (Oudejans et al., 2002). For instance, Diego Maradona’s ‘hand of God’ goal during the
quarter final match between Argentina and England at the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico City
was given because of referee Ali Bin Nasser’s and linesman Bogdan Dochev’s poor positioning on
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the field (Murray 2018).
The reduction of refereeing errors to promote fairness is a priority for sport governing bodies.
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Indeed, in the last two decades, many of them have implemented supportive technologies such as
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Video Assistant Referee (VAR) and Hawk-Eye to help referees make better, and ultimately fairer,
calls.1 Despite their proven positive impact on referees’ effectiveness, criticism of these
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technologies has mounted in some sports.2 For instance, in football, spectators and journalists have
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criticized the VAR system on the grounds that it negatively affects both the flow of the game and
the referee’s authority (i.e., the human authority on the field) and undermines important human
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elements such as verbal communication and fallibility (Holt 2019; Wilson 2018). Besides the use
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of assistive technology to improve refereeing, sport governing bodies have also invested in training
referees. For instance, after implementing the VAR, the Fédération Internationale de Football
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Association (FIFA) launched a worldwide training program to instruct national football leagues
and federations on the use of such supportive technology (FIFA, 2018).
One potential solution to poor refereeing that remains unexplored is the use of drugs (e.g., EPO
and Ritalin) or methods (e.g., blood doping) to improve referees’ performance. Using EPO and
blood doping, for example, would allow referees to run longer distances and better position
themselves on the field, whereas taking cognitive-enhancing drugs such as Ritalin would improve
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their attention span and ability to concentrate and focus on specific aspects of the game. By reducing
referees’ errors, the use of these substances would positively affect fairness, understood as
compliance with the rules of sport.3 Despite these beneficial effects, the debate on the use of doping
to improve refereeing is underdeveloped in the sport philosophical literature.
The lack of attention to the use of doping substances and methods for refereeing purposes
contrasts with the consideration scholars have given to the use of such substances and methods to
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enhance athletic performance.4 Yet, when considered from the perspective of fairness, this
differential treatment is problematic. If allowing referees to take doping has a positive effect on
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fairness, anti-doping advocates should give more attention to the use of performance-enhancing
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drugs and methods to improve refereeing (Geeraets 2018). To put it differently, if sport-governing
bodies aim to protect and promote fairness in sport, they should consider the possibility of using
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performance-enhancing drugs and methods to improve refereeing.
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In this article, we provide an argument for this possibility. To do so, we proceed as follows. In
Section 2, we analyze the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) policy concerning the use of
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doping among referees. In this section, we show that whether WADA allows referees to use doping
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is unclear. In Section 3, we present and clarify our argument. Subsequently, in Section 4, we
consider possible objections to the argument. Section 5 summarizes our findings and provides a
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conclusion.
2. WADA on the use of doping among referees
No sport governing body tests referees for doping.5 However, this does not mean that WADA
explicitly allows referees to dope. The WADA Code (2019), commonly known as ‘the Code’, does
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Sport, Ethics & Philosophy: Journal of the British Philosophy of Sport Association
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not refer to referees or umpires. It is thus unclear whether the international governing body in charge
of anti-doping allows doping for refereeing purposes. The Code can be interpreted either way, that
is, as advocating either for or against using drugs to enhance referees’ abilities. Concerning athletes,
the Code states: ‘… any Person who participates in sport under the authority of any Signatory,
government, or other sports organization accepting the Code is an Athlete’ (WADA Code 2019,
135). If a relevant governing body does not regard referees as participants, then the Code allows
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referees to dope. In contrast, if the governing body takes referees to be participants, then the Code
does not allow referees to dope.
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WADA prohibits professionals other than athletes from doping. For instance, athletes’ support
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personnel are not allowed to use doping substances. WADA defines ‘athlete support personnel’ as
‘Any coach, trainer, manager, agent, team staff, official, medical, paramedical personnel, parent or
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any other Person working with, treating or assisting an Athlete participating in or preparing for
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sports Competition.’ (WADA Code 2019, p. 136). If the term ‘official’ here encompasses referees,
then the latter are not allowed to dope. However, it is unclear whether WADA’s intends this
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meaning. WADA extensively uses the word ‘official’ to refer to doping control officials (WADA
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Code 2019, 136), but these officials are not referees. Moreover, sport-governing bodies often regard
physicians and managers as officials.6 WADA should clarify its position on what the Code means
by ‘official’ and whether the term includes referees.
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Despite its lack of clarity on whether referees are allowed to dope, we assume that WADA
prohibits referees from doing so, as this fits its anti-doping position concerning athletes and other
sport-related professionals. In what follows, we will argue not only that referees should be allowed
to dope, but also that they ought to do it, provided that it is safe for them to do so.
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3. Our argument
Our argument proceeds in four steps, comprising three premises and a conclusion. We depart from
the moral claim that one ought to prevent unfairness or promote fairness if doing so does not
require significant sacrifices such as severe physical or social harm. Second, if performanceenhancing drugs improved refereeing (e.g., enabling referees to cover more ground and
concentrate better), their use would produce a positive effect on fairness. Third, the use of doping
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substances and methods to improve refereeing, assuming the drugs and methods are safe and legal,
requires minor sacrifices only. These three premises lead to the conclusion that sport referees ought
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to use performance-enhancing drugs or methods. Differently put, the argument goes as follows:
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Premise 1: A sport referee ought to prevent unfairness or promote fairness assuming no
significant sacrifices are required.
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Premise 2: Using performance-enhancing drugs and methods improves referees’ abilities.
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Premise 3: The use of such drugs and methods, assuming it is safe and legal, only requires
minor sacrifices.
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Conclusion: Sport referees ought to use performance-enhancing substances and methods.
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Some aspects of the argument require clarification. Concerning premise 1, it is important to note
that we are not claiming that WADA should penalize referees for refusing to dope. Our claim is
that referees have the moral obligation to use doping if the substances lack adverse effects,
enhance refereeing abilities, and are legal. If doping substances or methods result in any serious
harm using them would require significant sacrifices, which would run counter to premises 1 and
3. That doping is often harmful is widely documented (Birzniece 2015). For instance, at times,
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Sport, Ethics & Philosophy: Journal of the British Philosophy of Sport Association
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doping harms health, especially if not used under medical supervision. However, at other times,
despite not being harmful to health (e.g., autologous blood doping, that is, the infusion of the
subject’s own stored blood), doping might be detrimental to one’s income, prestige, and social
position (Zhou 2016). For example, the use of doping might harm a doping user’s income or social
status if the possession and purchase of doping substances and methods is illegal in the society in
which the user lives. To be clear, we argue that referees ought to use doping if doing so is safe
and legal.
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Regarding premise 2, as we established in Section 1, unfairness in sport has to do with uncalled
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rule infractions. These infractions harm the interests of the athletes, referees, coaches, relatives,
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spectators, and nations that should benefit from the rule infraction. Recall Maradona’s ‘hand of
God’ goal. If the goal had been ruled out, England might have won the 1986 World Cup. The best
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referees are those who make the least number of unfair calls. If doping allows referees to err less
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often, referees who benefit from using doping would be better than those who do not. Let us now
turn to some possible objections to the argument that we have presented in this section.
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4. Critical discussion
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One type of objection against our position draws on arguments against the use of doping to enhance
athletes’ performance in the sport philosophy literature. The other type of objection is based on
practical concerns. With regard to the former, first, it could be argued that enhancing referees’
abilities undermines the nature of both sport and refereeing. However, this objection does not hold.
Sport performance enhancement is different from refereeing performance enhancement. Sports
and refereeing are markedly different practices. The latter is an instrumental activity that aims to
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enforce the rulebook of a specific sport – for the game to be possible, fair, and flow. A referee is
successful by achieving the instrumental function of the practice, that is, by making calls that allow
the game to keep going, be fair, and flow nicely.
In contrast, the athletic performance is not evaluated solely in instrumental terms. As Bernard
Suits argues (1988), a sport is a game of physical skills whereby individuals exercise physical
abilities to achieve a goal by overcoming demanding situations or challenges. Sport, unlike
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refereeing, is not an instrumental activity. Rather, according to Suits, most individuals engage in
sport for the sake of doing it, that is, to enjoy the process and experience of testing their physical
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skills. The use of drugs to enhance performance can negatively affect the participants’ experience,
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removing what is valuable in it. This is hardly the case with refereeing. Being an instrumental
activity, referees should use any morally acceptable means that increase their efficiency, helping
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them to better achieve the goal of the practice. Drugs are to referees what hammers are for
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carpenters. Furthermore, contrary to the widespread idea that sport performance enhancement is
detrimental to the game, refereeing performance enhancement can have a positive effect on the
game.
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Second, doping can be harmful to health and, thereby, should be banned to protect its users.
Thus, at least as a rule of thumb, nobody should be morally obliged, or even expected, to engage
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in a harmful practice. However, this objection builds upon two contested assumptions, namely: (a)
doping is always harmful and (b) practices that risk inflicting harm should be banned to protect
people. Concerning (a), certain forms of doping (e.g., EPO and blood transfusion) are not generally
harmful to health if used under medical supervision (see e.g. López 2011, Lundby et al. 2007, and
Zhou 2016). This would certainly be the case with referees. If their use of doping were accepted
as instrumental to refereeing, they would not need to hide their doping practices, as athletes do
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Sport, Ethics & Philosophy: Journal of the British Philosophy of Sport Association
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because doping is banned. As for (b), banning a harmful practice in which adult, well-informed
individuals voluntarily decide to engage (e.g., racing in Formula 1 or BASE jumping) is an
unjustifiable autonomy-limiting intervention. Moreover, even those who endorse paternalistic
interventions to prevent harm should accept our argument, as we only accept that referees should
use drugs when it is safe for them to do it.
Third, the acceptance of refereeing doping could create a coercive environment that
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undermines the referees’ autonomy.7 If doping is not only allowed, but also morally required,
referees, especially those who refuse to use artificial means to enhance their performance, could
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feel coerced to dope. To respond to this objection, the meaning of ‘coercion’ must be clarified.
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Not all situations where somebody engages with another person through compulsion or brute force
(e.g., a sport official force-feeds a referee with Ritalin) are coercive8. This is not how we
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understand coercion. If that were the case, then it would be morally wrong to allow the use of
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doping among referees, for they would be coerced into doping, which would violate their
autonomy. Instead, we rely on Nozick’s (1969) view of coercion.9 Briefly, in this view a person A
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(the coercer) coerces another person B (the coercee) into doing x only if the following three
conditions are met:
2. A communicates a threat to B.
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1. A aims to get B to do x.
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3. A’s threat indicates that if B fails to do x, A will bring about some consequences that would
make not x-ing less desirable for B than x-ing.
To illustrate this understanding of coercion, consider a sport director saying to a referee, ‘If you
do not take these cognitive enhancers, my friend, you will be sacked.’ In this case, all three
conditions are met:
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1. The sport director aims to get the referee to take drugs.
2. The sport director verbally communicates the threat that the referee will face if he or she
fails to meet the sport director’s offer.
3. Refusing to take the drug would get the referee fired, which makes doping more desirable.
With this understanding of coercion in mind, coercion would not always occur if WADA lifted the
ban on doping for referees. First, it is unlikely that the acceptance of doping would inevitably
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coerce referees to use doping. By allowing referees to dope, WADA may not necessarily have the
aim of getting referees to do so. By analogy, a state that legalizes substances such as alcohol or
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tobacco does not intend people to consume such substances. The reasons for legalizing these
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substances are multiple – e.g., to combat a criminal black market on alcohol and tobacco or to
ensure that the state is less paternalistic. The same reasoning can be applied to lifting the ban on
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doping for referees. Thus, the first condition of coercion is not met, as WADA would probably not
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intend to make referees do something specific if they explicitly made it clear that referees are
allowed to dope. Moreover, permitting referees to use doping may not be communicating, in any
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way, a claim or threat to anyone. Therefore, the second condition is not met either. In addition, if
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the first and second conditions are not met, neither is the third. Therefore, if the Nozick-inspired
version of coercion is correct, the objection based on coercion against our argument does not hold
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water. By allowing doping for referees, WADA would not necessarily be acting in a coercive way.
Of course, a sport governing body may coerce referees to use doping under the threat of firing
or punishing them. However, this would hardly be the purpose of lifting the ban on doping for
referees. Nor is it clear that coercion would occur if the alleged coercers are peers collectively
imposing social pressure on an individual to dope. Social pressure can be defined in many ways we do not have space here to specify them all. If ‘social pressure’ means merely that a person
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comes under pressure to use doping substances because he or she knows or believes that his or her
peers are using them (so there is no explicit request from peers to dope),10 then none of the three
conditions for coercion are met. Furthermore, social pressure is not always morally problematic.
In elite sport, for example, social pressure is often inherent to the game (see e.g. Allen 2003). And
while peer pressure may increase the probability of negative ramifications, e.g. eating disorders
(Mallin 2007), peer pressure may also increase the probability of positive outcomes, e.g.
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confidence, connection, compassion and caring (Fraser-Thomas et al. 2005). So, it seems to be an
open question whether referees will experience a negative social pressure to use performance
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enhancing drugs or methods given it was allowed.
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Regarding practical objections to our argument, some might claim that current referees are
good enough and fallible, and thereby we should not expect perfection from them. Certainly,
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whether they use doping or not, humans are, and will always be, fallible. However, even though
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referees are often subject to strict training and selection processes, they can always improve.
Indeed, sport governing bodies invest big sums of money to improve refereeing by training referees
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and developing supportive technology such as VAR and Hawk-Eye technology (FIFA 2016;
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UEFA 2019). Technology and training can certainly help improve refereeing, but pointing out that
this is the case fails to raise an objection to our argument. As we stated above, despite their training,
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baseball umpires still miss 10–15% of calls. Furthermore, performance-enhancing drugs and
methods might also help technicians manipulating supportive technology to be more effective in
helping referees make better calls.
Another practical problem would be that doping is expensive. Thus, given the economic
differences among national sport federations, the use of doping to enhance refereeing would widen
differences in refereeing quality among countries, which would have a detrimental effect on
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fairness. However, this problem can be resolved if sport governing bodies subsidized access to
performance-enhancing drugs for referees, just like the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP)
covers the cost of Hawk-Eye.
One could further argue that allowing referees to dope would open the gates to broader
acceptance and use of doping for athletic purposes. Promoting the use of performance-enhancing
substances and methods among referees would in this case, function as a Trojan horse within
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today’s sport community, where agreement on the need to control and reduce the use of doping
seems to be lacking. We take this to be a legitimate concern. However, as we established above,
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the goals and nature of refereeing and sport are different. Thus, accepting the use of drugs in one
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of the practices should not lead to acceptance in the other. Indeed, referees and athletes understand
themselves as performing different and, in some cases opposing, jobs and functions (e.g., both
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perceive each other as enemies to deceive, manipulate, or discipline). Moreover, as is already the
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case, social distance between referees and athletes is required. This is not only to prevent their
relationship from affecting referees’ judgment, but also, if doping for refereeing purposes were to
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be allowed, to prevent athletes from having access to the drugs referees use.
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Another counterargument one could make is that refereeing errors are evenly distributed.
Thus, refereeing errors do not hinder sport fairness. Sometimes refereeing errors are to the
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detriment of one side; at other times, referees make poor calls that benefit the other side. Moreover,
if this is the case, there is no problem with fairness and referees erring. Of course, it would be good
if referees’ errors were evenly distributed, but this is not the case. Did the referees make up for
their poor call against England in the 1986 World Cup? As far as we know, they did not, and there
is no guarantee that errors are evenly distributed. As empirical research demonstrates (Morgulev
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et al., 2018), referees are biased to make calls that benefit home or powerful teams (e.g., favor the
home team if the atmosphere is loud) and specific types of athletes.
Finally, one could argue that the social perception of allowing referees to use doping would
be very negative. This is, of course, an empirical question. Some spectators or sponsors might not
have a problem with refereeing doping, and they might even support it if it increased fairness in
sport. So, before introducing “a drug for referee policy,” it might be worthwhile to educate and
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inform the public on why this a good idea for the world of sports.
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5. Conclusion
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When the ethics of doping is being discussed in the scholarly literature and sporting world, the
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focus has always been on athletes. This is, of course, an important focus, but it has made us blind
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to consider the ethics of using doping to enhance referees’ performance. For instance, as we have
shown in this article, even WADA is unclear on whether referees are allowed to use doping. To
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fill this gap in the ethics of doping literature and spur discussion on the topic, in this article, we
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have made a case for the view that referees ought to use doping if it is safe and effective. And the
argument for this is that, by using doping, referees can promote a core value in sport, namely:
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fairness. Finally, we have presented and critically discussed possible objections to our argument
and responded to them. So if there are no further and plausible objections against our argument,
we conclude that referees, under certain conditions, ought to dope.
URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rsep Email: m.j.mcnamee@swansea.ac.uk
Page 13 of 17
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Notes
1
See e.g. Collins and Evans (2008) for a description of some of the technological details of how
Hawk-Eye technology works.
2 Collins (2010), for example, has argued that it is not made clear to the public that the use of
Hawk-Eye is not 100% reliable.
3 See e.g. Loland (2002).
4 One exception to this – though it is not a text in an academic journal – is a short blog
contribution by Anders Sandberg http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/05/the-dignity-of-thereferee/. However, while Sandberg only discusses whether there should be a ban on referees
using doping, and concludes that this should not be done, we argue that referees should be
allowed to use doping and further argue that referees ought to use doping in order to increase fair
play in the sport arena.
5 Scientific evidence on the frequency and prevalence of testing referees for doping use is lacking
– UEFA, for example, said in 2013 that it will not test referees in 2013 and 2014
http://www.dutchreferee.com/no-blood-tests-for-referees-in-20132014-by-uefa/.
Testing
of
referees is not done very often – and when it is, it can be a front-page story
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/9425924/boxing-referee-judges-drug-tested-wbc/.
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6
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For instance, the International Handball Federation (IHF) employs the word ‘official’ for nonplaying team members (not referees) – e.g. the responsible team official is the only one allowed to
contact
the
referee.
See
page
15
in
the
IHF
Regulations:
https://www.ihf.info/sites/default/files/2019-07/New-Rules%20of%20the%20Game_GB.pdf
7 See e.g. Murray (1983) or Holowchak (2000) for this type of worry. See Veber (2014) for a
critical discussion of this view.
8 See Anderson (2013) for a more detailed account of this understanding of ‘coercion’. Dubljevic
(2013) calls it ‘total coercion’.
9 We also draw here on Veber’s (2014) criticism of arguments from coercion against the use of
doping in sport.
10 This specification is identical to the characterization of ‘peer pressure’ given by Fitz et al.
(2013, p. 5).
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