Premier League forced into major VAR change for West Ham vs Brentford amid AWS outage

VAR will not operate as usual during the Premier League clash between West Ham and Brentford, which Sky Sports are showing on Monday Night Football

The Premier League have confirmed that West Ham United’s match against Brentford on Monday night has begun without the use of semi-automated offside technology. VAR will instead use virtual offside lines as they have done during previous seasons.

The change is due a global Amazon Web Services outage on Monday that has affected over 1,000 companies and millions of people. An announcement was made by the Premier League Match Centre four minutes before kick-off at the London Stadium.

“Due to the impact of today’s global AWS outage, this evening’s match will now begin without the use of Semi-Automated Offside Technology (SAOT),” a post on X read. “If required, the VAR will use virtual offside lines, as in previous seasons, to determine an offside decision.

“If SAOT becomes available during the game, it will be implemented when appropriate.”

It was confirmed at the start of the second half that SOAT was available. Andy Madley refereed the match in question, with Craig Taylor and Nicholas Hopton his assistant referees and Thomas Bramall the fourth official, while Jarred Gillett is the VAR – and Tim Robinson the assistant VAR.

Semi-automated offside technology has been used in the Premier League since mid-April and it was also used in the FA Cup last season. The first trials of such technology were in 2021, most notably at the Club World Cup.

Its wider use then started at the following year’s World Cup, with the Champions League, La Liga and Serie A then implementing it before its adoption by the Premier League.

It is said to place virtual offside lines with increased consistency, efficiency and speed by utilising optical player tracking, but it does not affect the accuracy of decisions. SAOT also produces the virtual graphic that appear on screens inside stadiums and as part of live broadcasts.

The league developed the system in collaboration with technology company Genius Sports and Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO). Genius Sports appear to have migrated their onsite infrastructure to the AWS Cloud last year, according to a blog post from SoftServe, the company who claim they partnered with Genius Sports for the migration.

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