Technology consideration in tennis umpiring: replacing the humans

Abstract

New technologies step into sports refereeing, officiating, or umpiring. This technology can assist humans to avoid blunders or errors. However, in tennis, this technology now starts to replace humans, i.e. the line umpires. In this letter, we try to provide insight into potential problems, that this technology brings, but also we try to provide its benefits. We offer considerations from the umpire (human) view. It is not very clear and we consider it still in a grey zone, what are the next best steps, even though it seems that the new technology implementation is unavoidable. In this letter, we focus on tennis line umpires, because technology is replacing them now. Therefore, would like to encourage and call for more research on this currently hot topic.