Building the future of football, live: REFSIX at the KNVB's 'Football of Tomorrow' hackathon
Last week we packed up the REFSIX kit and headed to the Netherlands for two days that reminded us exactly why we started building this in the first place.
The KNVB invited us to take part in their 'Football of Tomorrow' hackathon — a two-day sprint bringing together the federation, PwC, and a handful of technology partners to figure out how data, AI and futsal can shape the next generation of football experiences. We were there as part of the KNVB's #11 Innovation Programme, the federation's initiative for partnering with companies pushing the game forward.
And we came with something we've been quietly excited about for a while: a live API.
What we built
For years, REFSIX has been the watch on the referee's wrist — tracking goals, cards, substitutions, time, fouls, every meaningful moment of a match as it happens. Three million matches and counting. But until now, that data has largely lived inside our app, useful to referees and the people who care about their performance.
The hackathon was the perfect moment to change that.
We opened up a live data API that streams everything the referee records — in real time — from the moment they blow the first whistle. Goals appear the instant they're given. Cards land the second they're issued. The match clock ticks live. No delay, no manual entry, no spreadsheets — just the truth of what's happening on the pitch, available to anyone building on top of it.
Then we handed it over to the hackathon teams and watched what they did with it.
What the teams built
This is the bit that genuinely made the two days for us.
Within hours, teams were plugging into the feed and building things we'd talked about as "one day" ideas for years. Fan apps that updated as goals went in. Live scoreboards displayed on screens around the venue. Real-time league standings that recalculated as futsal matches finished. Player-facing experiences that surfaced match data the second the whistle blew.
All of it powered by a referee — usually a volunteer, often unpaid, frequently underappreciated — tapping their watch.
That's the bit we keep coming back to. The referee is the single source of truth in any match. They're the only person on the pitch whose job it is to know exactly what's happened. If you can capture that data cleanly, in real time, you unlock everything downstream: broadcast graphics, fan engagement, club analytics, league administration. The infrastructure of football starts with whoever's officiating.
Why futsal, and why now
Futsal is a brilliant testbed for this kind of work. The pace is relentless, the data is dense, and the format lends itself to digital experiences in a way that's harder to pull off in the 90-minute grassroots eleven-a-side game. Goals, fouls accumulating towards the team foul limit, rolling subs, time-outs — there's constant activity to surface.
The KNVB has been ahead of the curve on this. Their willingness to back partners like us, experiment with formats, and treat the grassroots and semi-professional game as a serious frontier for innovation is why the Dutch game keeps producing ideas the rest of the football world ends up adopting.
What it means for REFSIX
For us, the hackathon was a proof point. The live API isn't a side project — it's a glimpse of where REFSIX is heading. We've spent eight years building the most accurate, referee-trusted match data capture system in the world. The next chapter is making that data useful to the wider football ecosystem: clubs, leagues, federations, broadcasters, fans.
We left the Netherlands with a notebook full of ideas, a lot of new contacts, and a clearer picture of what we want to build next.
Thank you
To the KNVB and the #11 Innovation Programme team — thank you for having us, and for backing the kind of partners who turn up with code instead of slides. To PwC and the other technology partners — it was a genuine pleasure building alongside you. And to every team that plugged into our API over those two days and made something real with it: you showed us what the future looks like.
If you're building something that needs live match data, or you're a federation or league thinking about how to bring referee data into your ecosystem, get in touch. We're ready.