A REFFIN’ DISGRACE

SPECIAL REPORT Don’t tell the wife... Michael Oliver can earn £100k, but elite-level partner Lucy only gets £120 a game!

Neil Moxley

PREMIER LEAGUE referees are being paid TWENTY times more than their counterparts in the Women’s Super League.

Officials in the men’s top flight are trousering nearly £100,000 per year – while their female equivalents are being asked to do a job at the same level for a pittance by comparison.

Leading referees such as Mike Dean earn a basic salary – in the region of £42,500 per year.

Add in £1,150 Premier League match fees, and the chance of Champions League fixtures too, and potential earnings are heading towards the six-figure salary bracket.

But women referees can find themselves turning out in front of crowds of over 30,000 paying customers at the Etihad, or a crowd of over 25,000 at Stamford Bridge – as happened earlier this season – for just £120.

Annual pay of less than £4,000 is the norm.

They also have to go without a weekly retainer, and receive no sick, illness or childcare benefits.

But they do have to meet the same fitness levels as officials in the Football League to qualify for the job in the first place.

They also find themselves evaluated on an equivalent basis as the men in the Premier League and Championship, with their decisions in the Super League receiving the same level of scrutiny.

The difference in how the two English top-flights are treated is dramatically highlighted within one household – with husband and wife Michael and Lucy Oliver ( right) experiencing utterly contrasting levels of r emuneration f or t heir refereeing expertise.

The plight of assistant referees is even worse.

Sian Massey, who is an assistant in the Premier League, earns an annual salary of £40,000 plus a match fee of £500 if she runs the line in the men’s top-flight.

But assistant referees in the Women’s Super League are paid just £60 – the same figure as those working the men’s National t i on l League – the fifth tier of the English game.

Women’s football has been on the rise since before the last World Cup, which saw interest in the game sky-rocket.

More than 11million people watched England women’s

Nsemi semi-final fin l defeat defe t to the United States on the BBC – which now has its own dedicated coverage of the Super League, opening up those referees to t he exacting ctin scr scrutiny tin that the men of the PL endure.

The FA, which runs the WSL, trumpeted t he f act that the match fees paid to the players are now th the same f for b both th the men’s and women’s senior England teams.

And they also issued a press release this week highlighting the growing rude health of the women’s game at international level, with a national record of 75,000 tickets now having been sold for England’s game against Germany at Wembley.

The FA have gone part of the way towards addressing concerns at WSL level, increasing the match fees by over 40 per cent ahead of the new campaign. They are also mindful of the fact that the pay has to reflect the affordability for clubs, and the cash generated through commercial revenue.

A Football Association spokesperson said: “We are fully committed to the development of match officials and we recently appointed a National Refereeing Manager to focus on the women’s professional game.

“We are always open to further discussions with football’s stakeholders about t he f uture professional development of referees as revenues grow in the game.”