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.
Referee Overview
Working as a Referee
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a referee. For example, did you know that they make an average of $27.72 an hour? That's $57,663 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 6% and produce 1,300 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Referee Do
There are certain skills that many referees have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed communication skills, decisionmaking skills and good vision.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a referee, we found that a lot of resumes listed 43.7% of referees included safety rules, while 6.3% of resumes included cpr, and 6.1% of resumes included safe environment. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the referee job title. But what industry to start with? Most referees actually find jobs in the education and hospitality industries.
How To Become a Referee
If you're interested in becoming a referee, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 67.4% of referees have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 2.5% of referees have master's degrees. Even though most referees have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a referee. When we researched the most common majors for a referee, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or high school diploma degrees. Other degrees that we often see on referee resumes include associate degree degrees or master's degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a referee. In fact, many referee jobs require experience in a role such as cashier. Meanwhile, many referees also have previous career experience in roles such as internship or sales associate.
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Referee Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of coach you might progress to a role such as team leader eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title board of directors member.
What is the right job for my career path?
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the rights job to get there.
Average Salary for a Referee
Best Paying Cities
Recently Added Salaries
Job TitleCompany  | Company | Start Date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
YMCA of The Suncoast Flag Football Referee-Greater Palm Harbor Branch Flag Football Referee-Greater Palm Harbor Branch | YMCA of The Suncoast YMCA of The Suncoast | 01/15/2021 01/15/2021 | $19,28401/15/2021 $19,284 |
YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne Referee-Jorgensen Ymca Referee-Jorgensen Ymca | YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne | 10/28/2020 10/28/2020 | $17,74010/28/2020 $17,740 |
YMCA of The Suncoast Referee (Basketball and Soccer)-James P. Gills Branch Referee (Basketball and Soccer)-James P. Gills Branch | YMCA of The Suncoast YMCA of The Suncoast | 10/23/2020 10/23/2020 | $19,28410/23/2020 $19,284 |
Missoula Family YMCA Youth Soccer Referee Youth Soccer Referee | Missoula Family YMCA Missoula Family YMCA | 09/08/2020 09/08/2020 | $25,04409/08/2020 $25,044 |
YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne Referee-Jackson R. Lehman Ymca Referee-Jackson R. Lehman Ymca | YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne | 08/08/2020 08/08/2020 | $17,74008/08/2020 $17,740 |
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Referee Resumes
Designing and figuring out what to include on your resume can be tough, not to mention time-consuming. That's why we put together a guide that is designed to help you craft the perfect resume for becoming a Referee. If you're needing extra inspiration, take a look through our selection of templates that are specific to your job.
Learn How To Write a Referee Resume
At Zippia, we went through countless Referee resumes and compiled some information about how best to optimize them. Here are some suggestions based on what we found, divided by the individual sections of the resume itself.
View Detailed InformationTop Skills For a Referee
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 43.7% of referees listed safety rules on their resume, but soft skills such as communication skills and decisionmaking skills are important as well.
- Safety Rules, 43.7%
- CPR, 6.3%
- Safe Environment, 6.1%
- Game Rules, 5.7%
- Communication, 4.0%
- Other Skills, 34.2% See All Referee Skills
Best States For a Referee
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a referee. The best states for people in this position are Alaska, New Jersey, New York, and Oregon. Referees make the most in Alaska with an average salary of $99,484. Whereas in New Jersey and New York, they would average $98,437 and $98,253, respectively. While referees would only make an average of $91,034 in Oregon, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Alaska
$99,484
Avg. Salary
2. New Mexico
$89,131
Avg. Salary
3. New Jersey
$98,438
Avg. Salary
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