Referees
What does the include do?
The referees include returns the match officials assigned to a fixture. Unlike the coaches include, this is a lean linking object, it does not embed the official's name or biographical data directly. You get IDs and a type, and need a separate lookup to get the person's details.
Why use referees?
Match centre displays: Show who officiated a fixture
Referee performance tracking: Combine with the standalone Referee endpoint's statistics to analyse card counts, penalties given, etc. per official
Data consistency checks: Confirm which officials were assigned before publishing match reports
Requesting referees
https://api.sportmonks.com/v3/football/fixtures/{fixture_id}
?api_token=YOUR_TOKEN&include=refereesResponse structure
{
"data": {
"id": 18535517,
"name": "Celtic vs Rangers",
"referees": [
{
"id": 2123470,
"fixture_id": 18535517,
"referee_id": 14468,
"type_id": 6
}
]
}
}Field descriptions
id
integer
Unique identifier for this referee assignment record
fixture_id
integer
The fixture this assignment belongs to
referee_id
integer
Links to the full referee record, see below to resolve this to a name
type_id
integer
Which officiating role this person held, see table below
Referee type values
Confirmed via /core/types:
type_id
Role
6
Referee
7
1st Assistant
8
2nd Assistant
9
4th Official
10
VAR
Not all roles are guaranteed to appear, even in VAR-using leagues. Live testing on a Scottish Premiership fixture from a season when VAR was active returned only one entry (type_id: 6, the main Referee), with no 4th Official or VAR entry present. Don't assume a fixture will include all five roles, or that a missing VAR entry means VAR wasn't used, coverage depends on what data was tracked for that specific match.
Getting the referee's name
The fixture-level referees include only gives you referee_id. To resolve this to a name and profile, make a separate request to the standalone Referee endpoint:
Code examples
Best practices
Don't assume all five roles will be present. Filter for the
type_idyou actually need (usually6, the main referee) rather than indexing by array position.Cache referee profile lookups. A referee's biographical data doesn't change often, cache by
referee_idrather than re-fetching on every fixture request.Use referee statistics for performance tracking, not this include. If you're building card-count or penalty-given dashboards, use
include=statistics.details.typeon the standalone Referee endpoint instead.
Related includes
Coaches - Similar fixture-level personnel include, but embeds full bio data directly (referees does not)
Participants - Required for general match context
Summary
The referees include returns lean linking objects (referee_id, type_id) rather than full profiles, unlike coaches. Resolve referee_id via a separate call to the standalone Referee endpoint to get a name. Type values run from 6 (Referee) to 10 (VAR), but not all roles are guaranteed to appear on every fixture, even in leagues that use VAR.
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