The controversies over the measurement of the lines and the tight forward positions of the footballers, the cause of countless discussions, could come to an end, or at least be attenuated, with the arrival of the implementation of semi-automatic offside in Spanish football, confirmed this Wednesday by the Royal Football Federation.
The RFEF announced that it has provisionally awarded the video referee assistance service (VAR) to the Mediapro group and the semi-automatic offside detection technology (SAOT) to Hawk-Eye Innovation. Both awards are provisional and for the next four seasons, from 2024/25 to 2027/28, indicated the RFEF.
The company Hawk-Eye Innovation was already chosen by the RFEF in 2019 as the VAR provider for the First and Second division in the 2019-20 season, after having been chosen by FIFA for the 2018 World Cup in Russia and by UEFA for the Champions League, as well as for goal-line technology for the 2020 Super Cup.
Mediapro and the RFEF have had a dispute in recent years, recently resolved by the Provincial Court of Madrid in favor of the audiovisual group due to the federation's decision to exclude it from the competitions for the award of LaLiga's VAR services in 2019 and the tender for the commercialization of the rights to the Copa del Rey for the 19/20, 20/21 and 21/22 seasons.
