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Why would anyone want to be a referee in today’s age? With the growth of social media, if a referee isn’t perfect, they are criticized, insulted, mocked and heavily questioned on their ability. The online world has become a minefield of negative conversations and disrespect towards referees just trying to do their jobs, and social media platforms aren’t doing much to combat this. 

To raise awareness around the extent of referee trolling in today’s sport, Bookmakers.com has revealed which referees have received the most negative comments across social media over the last 12 months. To illustrate what referees have to deal with, social listening data was analyzed across all major social media platforms; this revealed the number of negative remarks logged against each referee from the NBA.

The most trolled referees in the NBA

Due to its global popularity, being an NBA referee draws a lot of attention; and it shows. Observing the data, 9 of the 20 most trolled referees in the US come from the NBA, with Scott Foster receiving the most abuse in the league over the last 12 months (3,691 posts). Most of the abuse aimed at him came from Suns fans after their loss against the Bucks in the NBA Finals last year.

Natalie Sago comes in second place, with 9396 negative posts aimed her way over the last year, with a lot of them possibly from her recent collision with Klay Thompson. In third place is Sean Wright, with 6545 negative posts aimed his way, most of which probably came from Hawks fans after they blamed him for Trae Young’s injury back in June.

Below is a list of sports referees in order of volume of online abuse received over the last 12 months:

RankReferee/UmpireNumber of Negative Posts% of Negative Posts
1Scott Foster1963518.8%
2Natalie Sago93967.1%
3Sean Wright65458.7%
4Tony Brown400023.3%
5Tony Brothers383519.8%
6James Williams24001.4%
7Ben Taylor20993.6%
8Marc Davis205013.3%
9Eric Lewis18301.1%
10Jenna Schroeder17752.8%

It’s important to note that the above table illustrates direct abuse aimed at each referee. With the understanding that abuse towards referees and/or umpires isn’t always aimed directly by name (e.g. ‘this ref/umpire is….’), these figures are likely much higher. 

Further information and the top-20 most abused referees online can be found onsite here: https://bookmakers.com/news/the-worlds-most-trolled-referees