How To Become A Referee: What It Is and Career Path

What is a referee and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

If you want to know a sport inside out, then becoming a referee may bring a satisfactory role. Referring games may bring you some great benefits. You can be outside and run around, enjoy exciting games, and make a few dollars. Being a referee, you're rendering service to coaches, players, and fans. It's an incredible opportunity to give back to your community.

Being a sports referee, generally, you may preside over sporting or athletic events. Maintain the fairness and standards of an event or competition. Your core duty is to officiate the sporting events and games. Other than this, you may inspect sporting equipment, settle claims for infarction, enforce rules of the games and assess penalties. Being a referee, you may work for a professional sports organization, school, or community organizations. For some sports like boxing, you may work independently while for others you may work in groups.

To become a referee, generally, you may require a high school diploma and training. To be successful in a fast-paced environment, you must have an eye for detail, strong decision-making skills, physically active, and an ability to anticipate, observe and judge a play. As a sports referee, you might get in games, such as basketball, football, boxing, soccer, or volleyball.

Typically, you may work part-time. However, you may need to work irregular hours, weekends, or evenings for training sessions or seminars. Working as a referee, you may work few hours and make some pretty good money. Not only that, but as you improve and work higher level games, the money improves too.

ScoreRefereeUS Average

Salary

4.4

Avg. Salary $56,571

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

8.0

Growth Rate 32%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

2.9

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.34%

Asian 4.86%

Black or African American 8.04%

Hispanic or Latino 11.22%

Unknown 6.70%

White 68.84%

Gender

female 24.31%

male 75.69%

Age - 24

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 24

Stress Level

8.0

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

7.9

Complexity Level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

6.7

Work Life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a referee

Explore referee education requirements

Most common referee degrees

Bachelor's

67.1 %

High School Diploma

13.9 %

Associate

12.3 %

Start to develop specific referee skills

Skills	Percentages
Safety Regulations	46.61%
CPR	7.89%
Game Rules	7.45%
Hockey Games	3.83%
Safety Rules	3.53%

Complete relevant referee training and internships

Accountants spend an average of Less than 1 month on post-employment, on-the-job training. New referees learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a referee based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real referee resumes.

Research referee duties and responsibilities

Manage conflicts and resolutions between other umpires and coaches/parents.
Certify in CPR if need and remain calm in stressful situations.
Age groups ranging from coach pitch to NCAA.
Court referee- run up and down the court watching for fouls, travels, double dribbles, etc.

Prepare your referee resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your referee resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a referee resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Referee Resume templates

Build a professional Referee resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your Referee resume.

Apply for referee jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a referee job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do referees rate their job?

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Referee reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Sep 2019

Pros

Seeing the talent at the high school level is truly a blessing

Cons

Not enough games in a year and I would have to refer to a quote: I’d rather see one person exercise sportsmanship than 50 who preach it