Championship Clubs Vote Against Introducing VAR System for 2025-26 Season

When PGMO delivered its presentation to Championship clubs at last month's EFL annual meeting, there was a window of possibility, however narrow, that the second tier might take a step towards video officiating. That window has now been firmly shut. The Championship's clubs have rejected any introduction of Football Video Support for the 2025-26 campaign, and those familiar with the vote suggest the matter is unlikely to resurface any time soon.

The decision reflects a deep-rooted scepticism among Championship clubs towards video review technology, one driven not by ignorance of the arguments in its favour but by a clear calculation that the costs, both financial and in terms of supporter experience, outweigh any gains in decision-making accuracy. Several managers have publicly argued the opposite, but on this occasion it was the clubs themselves, not the dugout, that had the final word.

What makes this particularly interesting is the nature of what was actually on the table. This was not a proposal to introduce full-scale VAR as seen in the Premier League. Football Video Support is a deliberately scaled-down alternative, designed precisely for leagues without the camera infrastructure or officiating resources that top-flight competition enjoys. The Championship said no anyway, and the reasons illuminate a wider fault line running through English football's relationship with video technology.

What Football Video Support Actually Involves

FVS strips the VAR concept back to something more operationally manageable. There is no dedicated video assistant referee in the traditional sense. Instead, a replay operator presents the on-field referee with relevant camera angles at a pitchside monitor, and each head coach is allocated two challenges per match. Critically, a successful challenge is retained, meaning a manager can hold on to their review allocation if they call correctly. It is a system that places the burden of initiating a review on the coaching staff rather than on a team of officials watching a bank of screens.

FA chief executive Mark Bullingham described FVS earlier this year as a system that "reduces the amount of times when there is a VAR intervention and effectively puts the onus on the coach." That framing makes it sound comparatively unobtrusive. But the operational reality is more complicated. Across the final two rounds of Premier League fixtures, referees visited the pitchside monitor just twice in 20 matches. Under FVS, that figure could reach four monitor visits per game, and potentially climb higher whenever a challenge is upheld and additional time is consumed. In a league where the pace and continuity of matches are part of the product's appeal to supporters, that is a significant shift in the texture of a game. It also means the Championship's typical 46-match schedule, played at a relentless tempo across autumn and winter fixture piles, would be absorbing a new source of interruption at precisely the moments when crowd energy is highest.

FVS has been in trial across several competitions over the past two years, including the third division of the men's game in Spain, Serie C in Italy, and the top flight of the women's game in Spain. Its most recent expansion, to the Canadian Premier League this month, has already produced a case study that will unsettle anyone hoping the system is simple to implement cleanly.

The Canadian Precedent and the Tactical Problem

The incident in the Canadian Premier League that has drawn scrutiny involves a match between Pacific FC and Supra du Quebec, locked at 2-2 deep into injury time. Pacific FC's Joshua Belluz made a tackle that the referee allowed to pass without punishment. Supra du Quebec used one of their challenges to call for a straight red card for the foul. The challenge failed on that specific point: it was not deemed a red-card offence. However, once the referee was directed to the pitchside monitor, he was obliged to take whatever disciplinary action was correct. Belluz was already on a booking, and the appropriate response to the foul was a yellow card. The second caution meant a dismissal.

Supra du Quebec lost their challenge under the rules of the system, but they achieved the practical outcome they were seeking. They had a player sent off, and then scored a winning goal in the additional time created by the review process itself. The episode illustrates a structural vulnerability in the challenge model: a team can use a review strategically not to overturn a specific decision but to trigger a chain of events that benefits them, even when they do not technically win the challenge. This is not a hypothetical concern. It happened in a competitive match during the system's very first weeks in that competition. The challenge model was designed to discourage frivolous use, but the Canadian case demonstrates that a tactically astute coaching staff can exploit it in ways the rulebook does not prevent.

Manager Frustration Versus Club Pragmatism

The rejection sits awkwardly alongside the views expressed by several Championship managers in recent months. Norwich's Philippe Clement made clear his frustration after his side conceded what he regarded as a wrongly awarded penalty against Ipswich, openly stating that there are moments where video review would have produced a better outcome. Former Bristol City manager Gerhard Struber went further in January, arguing that the evidence strongly suggests VAR produces more accurate and fairer decisions overall.

These are not fringe opinions. They reflect a genuine managerial consensus that has been building across the second tier. But managers and clubs are not the same constituency, and it is clubs, not managers, who vote. The clubs' concerns centred on two areas: the financial cost of implementing the system and the impact on the matchday experience for supporters. Neither concern is unreasonable. The Championship attracts large and vocal crowds, and the moments of stoppages and confusion that have occasionally blighted VAR in the Premier League carry particular weight as deterrents for a league that prides itself on atmosphere and accessibility.

There is also an implicit argument here about competitive integrity. The Championship is a league of fine margins, with promotion worth hundreds of millions of pounds and relegation carrying severe financial consequences. Critics of video review might point out that those same margins make accurate officiating more important, not less. Supporters of the clubs' position would counter that FVS, in its current form, introduces new forms of uncertainty rather than eliminating the old ones. The Canadian incident gives that argument some force. What the vote ultimately reveals is that Championship clubs are not yet persuaded that the version of video review on offer is mature enough to be trusted in a competition where the financial consequences of a bad result can define a club's trajectory for years.

Goal Line Technology and the Road Ahead

While FVS has been rejected, the Championship will continue to use Goal Line Technology, which has operated in the second tier without significant controversy. The more immediate question is whether GLT will be extended to League One, a decision that will be put to a cost-based analysis before a vote in June. That process is more straightforward than FVS in almost every respect: GLT is binary, it does not interrupt the flow of play in the same way, and it has an established track record across multiple divisions and competitions globally.

The contrast between the two technologies is telling. Goal Line Technology was embraced precisely because it resolves one specific type of dispute with complete certainty and minimal disruption. FVS, even in its stripped-back form, is a system that introduces new variables: tactical challenges, contested interpretations at the monitor, and additional stoppages. For Championship clubs already nervous about replicating some of the Premier League's more awkward VAR moments, that distinction matters enormously. GLT offers a clean answer to a clean question; FVS opens a negotiation between coaches, referees and the laws of the game, and that negotiation does not always resolve tidily.

Internationally, the Championship finds itself outside a growing cohort of second-tier leagues that have adopted video review. VAR operates in the second divisions of Spain, Italy and Germany. It was on the verge of introduction in Ligue 2 in France before the collapse of the French football television rights deal made it financially unworkable. England's Championship, by contrast, has declined even the lighter-touch FVS option.

Verdict: A Decision That Reflects the Championship's Character

The rejection of FVS is, in one reading, simply the Championship being the Championship: fiercely protective of its identity, sceptical of top-down change, and reluctant to absorb costs that do not deliver obvious sporting benefit. That is not entirely a criticism. The league does have a distinctive character, and its clubs are right to interrogate whether a technology that is still producing unintended consequences in new environments is ready to be embedded into one of the most financially pressurised leagues in world football.

But there is a harder question lurking beneath this decision. The Championship is a league where a single refereeing error can end a manager's tenure, cost a club tens of millions in lost promotion revenue, or condemn a squad to a relegation battle. Managers who work within that environment and call for better tools to support correct decisions are not being naive. They are responding rationally to the stakes of the competition they work in.

For now, the clubs have spoken. The idea is closed, and BBC Sport understands it is not expected to return to the agenda next year either. The FVS debate in the Championship is over before it properly began, and the second tier enters 2025-26 relying on the same officiating framework it has always had, with Goal Line Technology as its sole concession to video assistance. Whether that position holds as the technology matures and the pressure from managers intensifies remains the genuinely open question.

Sources: Match and meeting information, quotes, and system details sourced from BBC Sport's reporting by Dale Johnson, Football Issues Correspondent.