Handle Officiating and Formal Disputes

The officiating workspace sits outside the per-tournament Live Operations dashboard and is scoped to the project. It is designed for referees and moderators who handle formal cases: disputes submitted by participants, conduct reports, and rule violation reviews. Each case has a full timeline, attached evidence, and a rulings workflow with a separate publication decision.

Where to find it

Projects → [Project] → Officiating

Subsections:

• Matches — projects/[id]/officiating/matches — match-level officiating view
• Referees — projects/[id]/officiating/referees — referee assignments per match

What you see

• Assignments — which referees are currently assigned to which matches across all tournaments in the project
• Case queue — all open cases (disputes, reports, rule violations), sorted by submission time
• Recent actions — a feed of recent officiating decisions for audit and awareness
• Case detail view — the full timeline of a single case: submission, evidence, notes, communications, and rulings
• Rulings — the form to issue a formal decision on a case
• Publication controls — choose whether a ruling is published to participants or kept internal

Step by step

Handle a dispute

1. A dispute reaches the case queue either because a participant submitted it via the Appeals flow or because staff created it internally from an issue.
2. Open the case from the Case queue.
3. Review the case timeline: read the original submission, any attached evidence, and prior notes.
4. Add your own notes as you investigate. Notes are internal by default.
5. Contact parties through the case if needed — the case record logs all communications.
6. When you have enough information, click Issue ruling.
7. Enter your decision and the reasoning. Select whether this ruling applies at the match level, participant level, or both.
8. Choose Publish to make the ruling visible to the involved parties, or Keep internal to restrict it to staff.
9. Confirm. The case status updates to Ruled.

Manage referee assignments

1. Go to Officiating → Referees.
2. Use the assignment table to see which matches currently have referees assigned and which do not.
3. Click Assign on any unassigned match to select a referee from your project's staff roster.
4. To change an assignment, click the current referee and select a replacement.

Review the match officiating view

1. Go to Officiating → Matches.
2. This view lists all matches across the project with their officiating status — unassigned, assigned, in review, or ruled.
3. Click any match to open its officiating detail and see associated cases.

What happens next

If a case originated from an appeal submitted by a participant, the appeal record lives in Governance. See the Appeals section in the Governance and Trust category.

If the dispute requires immediate match-level action before a formal ruling is complete, apply the action directly in Live Operations. See Match interventions.

For issues that have not yet escalated to a formal case, see Issue management.