Paying judges and referees

[Ricky Adams]

Many years ago i came up with a plan to pay judges and referees according to the amount of work they actually do. And it doesn't cost the promoter any money at all. Here is how it works; (there is also a different pay scale for those national and international events

In most tournaments of local, state, and regional venues, three officials are used in each ring (1 referee, 2 judges). With this is mind I used the following. First of all i needed to charge $40.00/competitor to pay for the tournament venue, trophies, etc. I siimply added $5.00/competitor. I used this extra $5.00/competitor to pay my officials. Payment was based on how many competitors each offical, officiated in the kata divisions (they judged kumite for free) I paid the Referees $3.00/comp. and each judge got $1.00/comp.

This encouraged each judge to endevour to get there referee's license, thus insuring higher abilities and a grwoing referee pool. Oh each official had to wait to be paid at the end of competition. if they leave before the competition ends they forfiet their pay.  My tournaments were small. the highest paid referee made about $85.00. This isn't much, but it helps. How many students would you encourage to participate if you could make enough to pay for a nice dinner on the way home fro the tournament?

I suggested this method to some of the bigger organizations and as yet none have followed my lead.  When they do I will begin refereeing again on a more regular basis.

[scottquint]

Good idea. I'm guesing those that don't do it have two different motivations. There would be the traditionalists that would not want to add the tumult of referee paying. People act differently when they are getting paid vs. other motivations. The other reason is economics. Why add the complexity of paying when referees seem perfectly willing to work for free. Not only would they worry that the higher entry fee would result in fewer participants, but then there is the keeping track of who gets paid what. Not that that should be very complicated, but it is more logistics than before