RefAssist
RefAssist is a Belgian SaaS company that provides modular cloud-based referee and sports official management software to national sports federations across 13 sports disciplines and approximately 10 countries, sold as custom annual subscriptions.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2015
- HeadquartersHerzele, Belgium
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What RefAssist does
RefAssist, headquartered in Herzele, Belgium, and founded in 2015 by Dieter De Naeyer (CEO, also VAR project manager at the Royal Belgian Football Association) and Ken De Norre-De Groof, is a privately-held SaaS company that sells cloud-based referee and sports official management software to national and international sports federations. The platform originated from a Royal Belgian Football Association (URBSFA) request to automate referee planning and has since expanded into a multi-sport, multi-region product. Named customers include the AFL (via the OfficialsHQ brand), Cricket Australia, RBFA, Royal Dutch Hockey Association (KNHB), Fédération Française de Basket-ball, World Squash Officiating, Belgian Cycling, Fédération Luxembourgeoise de Football, Football Association of Ireland (KKÍ), and Football Flanders.
The product is a modular all-in-one platform consisting of RefAssist Core (an appointment, communications, official management, and financial workflow engine) plus eight stackable modules: Financial, Courses & Training, Match Reports, Physical Tracking, Match Video Management, Registration, Distance Calculator, and Tournaments. The platform's central technical asset is an automatic referee planning algorithm that filters officials across distance, availability, conflict rules, qualifications, and personal preferences to generate appointments in a single click. The platform exposes an API for real-time competition data exchange (e.g., PlayHQ), supports wearable-data ingestion (Polar, StatSports) and navigation handoffs (Google Maps, Waze, Apple Maps), runs in four languages, and serves both web and a native iOS/Android mobile app that launched in May 2026.
RefAssist operates a B2B subscription model with custom annual pricing tied to module selection, official headcount, and sport disciplines per federation. Distribution is entirely direct and consultative: federations request a free 30-minute demo, after which the RefAssist team — composed of current and former referees — handles configuration, onboarding, and project management. RefAssist discloses no external institutional capital and has been developed with support from Flanders Investment & Trade, a Flemish regional development agency. Disclosed scale includes more than 100 federations, 50,000+ active officials, and over 1 million matches appointed per season across approximately 10 countries.
RefAssist firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- RefAssist
- Legal name
- RefAssist
- Website
- https://refassist.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2015
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- RefAssist is a Belgian SaaS company that provides modular cloud-based referee and sports official management software to national sports federations across 13 sports disciplines and approximately 10 countries, sold as custom annual subscriptions.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
RefAssist industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Sports Officiating Software
- NAICS
- Spectator Sports (71121)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Sports Officiating & Competition Management (MPAGAMAK)
- akta.pro secondary industry
- Sports Data, Analytics & CRM Services (Fan Data, Insights, Audience Development) (MPAKAKAO)
Keywords
Where RefAssist is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Herzele
- HQ country
- Belgium
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
RefAssist business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- SaaS Platform Licensing (Subscription): RefAssist operates as a B2B SaaS platform with a modular subscription model. Sports federations select the modules they need (Core + additional modules). Pricing is custom and quote-based per federation's specific needs and size. The company emphasizes transparent and competitive pricing with no surprises.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Annual | Custom modular subscription per federation |
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels1 record
Marketing channels5 records
RefAssist product offering
Product offeringCore offering
RefAssist is a cloud-based, modular all-in-one SaaS platform for sports federations and national associations to manage referee and match official operations. The Core platform provides automatic and manual referee appointment scheduling, official management, financial workflows, and communication with officiating stakeholders, and is extendable via stackable add-on modules covering financial management, training courses, match reports, physical tracking, video-based assessment, registration, distance calculation, and tournaments, plus a native iOS/Android mobile app used by officials in 10+ countries.
Product overview
RefAssist is a modular all-in-one cloud platform for referee and sports official management. The portfolio consists of RefAssist Core as the central platform, supplemented by eight specialized add-on modules (Financier, Courses and Training, Match Reports and Questionnaires, Physical Tracking, Match Video Management, Registration, Distance Calculator, and Tournaments) plus the RefAssist mobile app. The core platform enables efficient referee management, errorless manual and automatic appointments, and communication with all officiating stakeholders. The modular architecture allows federations to customize and extend the platform by selecting only the modules they need, with each module addressing specific operational challenges from financial management to video-based training.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- RefAssist Core Platform The central cloud-based referee management platform providing automatic and manual appointment scheduling, official management, communication across officiating stakeholders, and financial tracking as a unified solution for sports federations and national associations.
- RefAssist Mobile App Native mobile application for iOS and Android that lets referees accept or reject appointments, view match details, fill out match reports, manage open appointments, track calendar and (un)availabilities including recurring patterns, submit awards votes, and receive push notifications with generated navigation routes to match venues.
- RefAssist Financier Module Financial management module for referee payments that handles fee configuration, automatic fee generation, expense declaration with approval workflow, travel fee reimbursements, and customizable payment exports with tax compliance, including payslip generation.
- RefAssist Courses and Training Module Course and training management module that organizes theoretical and physical training sessions, from instructor appointments to invitations, attendance tracking, and detailed reporting with financial links.
- RefAssist Match Reports and Questionnaires Module Match reports and questionnaires module with a visual configurator for custom report templates, approval workflows, and statistics generation including observation reports, disciplinary reports, self-evaluation, and performance reports.
- RefAssist Physical Tracking Module Physical tracking module for monitoring referee fitness through daily training activities linked to wearable technology integrations (Polar, StatSports), with calendar overview and physical trainer communication tools.
- RefAssist Match Video Management Module Match video management module that lets federations upload match videos, create tagged clips, share them with officials, and run video-based knowledge tests with multiple-choice questions and per-question difficulty statistics for referee training and assessment.
- RefAssist Registration Module Registration module enabling referee sign-up with specifications collection and configurable approval workflows for referee managers, including optional payment functionality.
- RefAssist Distance Calculator Module Distance calculator module that automatically computes distances between referee homes and match venues, used for optimized manual or automatic appointment assignment and integrated with the Financier module for travel fee calculation.
- RefAssist Tournaments Module Tournament module covering complete referee management workflows for tournaments including referee selection, match schedule configuration, seamless appointments, communication, digital match reports, and payment management.
Quantifiable outcome
- 80% faster appointment process (confirmed by RBFA: 'Using RefAssist for appointing freed up 80% of our working time')
- +4 more outcomes
Companies that use RefAssist
Customer profileNamed customers10 records
Segments3 records
Ideal customer profiles1 record
RefAssist technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration8 records
AI capability2 records
Feature7 records
RefAssist partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Four partnerships are on record, tiered core and supportive.
- RefSixcoreRefAssist and RefSix joined forces to supply an innovative combined referee management solution. RefAssist focuses on sports federations with its platform for managing and appointing referees. RefSix provides a referee-managed app for recording match incidents, timing games, and tracking physical performance (used in 160 countries with 800k+ matches completed). All data is synchronized between both platforms, enabling referee managers to stay updated on availabilities, cancellations, appointments, and trainings. First joint project launched in Scotland.
- Televic Education (assessmentQ)coreRefAssist and Televic Education combined their technology offerings to create an integrated solution for evaluating and improving referee knowledge. Televic's assessmentQ platform is used for online training and e-assessment of referee regulations knowledge. RefAssist uses insights from assessmentQ to more efficiently plan and follow up with referees. A pilot project in international football was launched.
- PlayHQcoreRefAssist partnered with PlayHQ (one of the world's fastest-growing cloud-based community sport platforms) for Australian market expansion. PlayHQ provides real-time competition data via API to RefAssist, ensuring accurate referee appointments. The partnership complements both technology stacks — PlayHQ handles competition management, scheduling, and real-time scoring while RefAssist manages referee appointments. The alliance also supports PlayHQ's European expansion plans.
- Flanders Investment & TradesupportiveRefAssist was developed with the support of Flanders Investment & Trade, a Belgian regional development agency that supports internationalization of Flemish companies.
Scale indicators14 records
Recent moves9 records
Expansion highlights5 records
RefAssist competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- PlayHQ: Cloud-based community-sport competition management platform serving Australian sporting organizations with real-time match data, scheduling, and scoring. Directly comparable to RefAssist as a mutual partner whose competition-management stack overlaps with RefAssist's officiating-management stack for federations.
- Stack Sports: Sports management platform serving national governing bodies, leagues, and associations across multiple sports with membership, competition, and officiating-adjacent tooling. Directly competes with RefAssist for federation-level sports-organization software budgets in the U.S. and beyond.
- Sport80: Sports governing body software focused on federation operations, officiating, and membership management. Highly comparable to RefAssist's target segment of national/international sports federations needing all-in-one officiating and official lifecycle management.
Broad incumbents
- Hudl: Sports video, performance analysis, and team-management platform used widely by clubs and federations for video review and athlete evaluation. Comparable via its Match Video Management adjacency to RefAssist's video tests/learning module, though it does not focus on referee appointment automation.
- Genius Sports: Global sports data and technology company providing officiating-support, data, and broadcast technology to federations and leagues. A broadly scaled incumbent whose officiating and Second Spectrum offerings increasingly overlap with parts of RefAssist's value proposition.
- Sportradar: Global sports data and technology platform with officiating, integrity, and federation technology solutions. Comparable as a large-scale sports-tech incumbent serving leagues, federations, and officials, with materially broader scale than RefAssist's specialized officiating niche.
- Spond: Sports club and team management platform with scheduling, payments, and communication features widely adopted across European amateur sports. Comparable to RefAssist in targeting sports federations and clubs with operational software, though broader rather than officiating-specialized.
- TeamSnap: Mass-market team and group management SaaS used by clubs, leagues, and associations for scheduling, communication, and registration. Comparable as a sports-organization management incumbent, though it does not specialize in officiating workflows the way RefAssist does.
Others
- Catapult Sports: Athlete and team performance monitoring platform with wearable-based physical tracking for teams and federations. Adjacent rather than directly competitive: RefAssist integrates with Catapult's wearable peers (Polar, StatSports) for its Physical Tracking module, making Catapult a complementary technology ecosystem participant.
- RefSix: Referee-managed mobile app for recording match incidents, timing games, and tracking physical performance (used in 160 countries with 800k+ matches). Comparable in the officiating end-user experience but functions as a RefAssist integration partner rather than a competing federation platform.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
RefAssist social profiles
Digital presenceRefAssist financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
RefAssist leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles5 records
RefAssist funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
RefAssist M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about RefAssist
What does RefAssist do?
RefAssist is a cloud-based, modular all-in-one SaaS platform for sports federations and national associations to manage referee and match official operations. The Core platform provides automatic and manual referee appointment scheduling, official management, financial workflows, and communication with officiating stakeholders, and is extendable via stackable add-on modules covering financial management, training courses, match reports, physical tracking, video-based assessment, registration, distance calculation, and tournaments, plus a native iOS/Android mobile app used by officials in 10+ countries.
Is RefAssist a public or private company?
RefAssist is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was RefAssist founded?
RefAssist was founded in 2015. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is RefAssist based?
RefAssist is headquartered in Herzele, Belgium, in the Europe region.
How does RefAssist make money?
One revenue line is on record: saaS Platform Licensing (Subscription).
Who are RefAssist's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are PlayHQ, Stack Sports and Sport80. Broad incumbents are Hudl, Genius Sports, Sportradar, Spond and TeamSnap. Others are Catapult Sports and RefSix.
Does RefAssist have an API?
Yes. RefAssist offers an API that enables real-time data synchronization with partner platforms. The API allows receiving real-time updates concerning match data, enabling automatic referee appointments. The API is described as easy to use and ensures optimal integration in any commercial platform. Third-party partners like PlayHQ use the API to receive real-time updates about matches for their customers.
What industry is RefAssist in?
RefAssist's product category is Sports Officiating Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is MPAGAMAK, Sports Officiating & Competition Management, with a secondary code of MPAKAKAO, Sports Data, Analytics & CRM Services (Fan Data, Insights, Audience Development). Its NAICS code is 71121.