EPL referee & TV mentions per matchweek MW1 → MW34
How often fans talk about the four taxonomy groups — officiating, VAR, commentators/pundits and channels/broadcasters — across every post and reply in 2,671,019 Reddit, X/Twitter and YouTube comments. Each post scanned for any keyword from the group's list in taxonomy.json; a post with ≥1 matching term counts once for that group per matchweek. The second chart collapses officiating+VAR into Referee and channels+commentator into TV.
6.44%
Officiating share
peak MW6 · 171,940 posts
2.42%
VAR share
peak MW3 · 64,526 posts
1.48%
Commentator share
peak MW20 · 39,649 posts
0.97%
Channel share
peak MW22 · 26,038 posts
Share of conversation per matchweek by category
% of all posts/replies in each matchweek that mention at least one keyword from each taxonomy group. Normalised so matchweeks with 2–3× more posts don't distort the picture. Peaks: officiating MW6, VAR MW3, commentator MW20, channels MW22.
Referee vs TV officiating + VAR · channels + commentator
Referee = share of posts mentioning an officiating OR VAR term. TV = share mentioning a channel OR commentator/pundit term. Peaks: Referee MW6, TV MW20. Season average: Referee 8.74% vs TV 2.5% — fans talk about the referee ~3.5× more than the broadcast.
Referee (avg 8.74% of conversation)
TV (avg 2.5% of conversation)
Top 10 terms per group
Officiating
Most-mentioned keywords from the officiating taxonomy (156 matched). % is share of all officiating-mentioning posts.
| # | Term | Posts | % | |
|---|
| 1 | ref | 34,332 | 19.97% | |
| 2 | penalty | 18,886 | 10.98% | |
| 3 | pen | 15,630 | 9.09% | |
| 4 | offside | 11,203 | 6.52% | |
| 5 | call | 11,156 | 6.49% | |
| 6 | decision | 10,992 | 6.39% | |
| 7 | refs | 9,908 | 5.76% | |
| 8 | called | 7,383 | 4.29% | |
| 9 | decisions | 5,936 | 3.45% | |
| 10 | referee | 5,706 | 3.32% | |
VAR
Most-mentioned keywords from the var taxonomy (77 matched). % is share of all VAR-mentioning posts.
| # | Term | Posts | % | |
|---|
| 1 | var | 15,691 | 24.32% | |
| 2 | wait | 10,666 | 16.53% | |
| 3 | joke | 10,072 | 15.61% | |
| 4 | waiting | 4,893 | 7.58% | |
| 5 | pgmol | 2,900 | 4.49% | |
| 6 | killing | 2,240 | 3.47% | |
| 7 | ruined | 2,219 | 3.44% | |
| 8 | killed | 2,181 | 3.38% | |
| 9 | shambles | 1,870 | 2.9% | |
| 10 | consistency | 1,741 | 2.7% | |
Commentator / Pundit
Most-mentioned keywords from the commentator taxonomy (146 matched). % is share of all commentator-mentioning posts.
| # | Term | Posts | % | |
|---|
| 1 | commentator | 5,273 | 13.3% | |
| 2 | commentators | 4,750 | 11.98% | |
| 3 | rio | 4,729 | 11.93% | |
| 4 | neville | 3,748 | 9.45% | |
| 5 | macca | 3,381 | 8.53% | |
| 6 | gary neville | 2,552 | 6.44% | |
| 7 | keane | 2,265 | 5.71% | |
| 8 | pundits | 1,658 | 4.18% | |
| 9 | carragher | 1,084 | 2.73% | |
| 10 | pundit | 850 | 2.14% | |
Channels / Broadcast
Most-mentioned keywords from the channels taxonomy (76 matched). % is share of all channel-mentioning posts.
| # | Term | Posts | % | |
|---|
| 1 | highlights | 4,235 | 16.26% | |
| 2 | sky | 3,878 | 14.89% | |
| 3 | live | 3,674 | 14.11% | |
| 4 | replay | 2,369 | 9.1% | |
| 5 | tv | 2,350 | 9.03% | |
| 6 | stream | 1,560 | 5.99% | |
| 7 | camera | 1,384 | 5.32% | |
| 8 | sky sports | 1,374 | 5.28% | |
| 9 | feed | 1,248 | 4.79% | |
| 10 | peacock | 965 | 3.71% | |