File size: 4,412 Bytes
d735bd2
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
0943706
 
 
 
 
d735bd2
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
---
version: 1.0.0
license: cc-by-nc-4.0
task_categories:
  - object-detection
  - video-classification
tags:
  - sports
  - soccer
  - football
  - referee-tracking
  - person-detection
annotations_creators:
  - human-verified
  - machine-generated
pretty_name: Soccer Referee Tracking Dataset
size_categories:
  - 1K<n<10K
---

# Soccer Referee Tracking Dataset

<p align="center">
  <img src="previews/sample_hd_2018.jpg" width="48%" alt="Sample: 2018 HD with 3 referees" />
  <img src="previews/sample_sd_1996.jpg" width="48%" alt="Sample: 1996 SD with 2 referees" />
</p>

A curated dataset for detecting and tracking **referees** in professional soccer broadcast footage. This dataset supports the development of models that can distinguish referees from players, staff, and other on-field personnel under varied broadcast conditions.

## Dataset Description

This public sample consists of **1,450 frames** extracted    from **10 video clips** of professional soccer broadcasts. The data is split into two categories based on referee visibility:

- **Visible**: Frames where at least one referee is clearly visible and annotated with a bounding box.
- **Not Visible**: Frames where no referee is visible in the frame (negative samples).

This is a representative subset of a larger internal dataset, selected to cover diverse match conditions (SD/HD, different teams, mined vs. segmented clips).

### Statistics

| Category | Samples | Description |
|----------|---------|-------------|
| **Visible** | 802 | Frames with at least one referee bounding box |
| **Not Visible** | 648 | Frames with no visible referee (hard negatives) |
| **Total** | **1,450** | Total frames from 10 clips |

### Source Data

- **Domain**: Professional Soccer Broadcasts
- **Resolution**: Varied
- **Annotation Style**: YOLO format (normalized xywh)
- **Labeling Method**: Active Learning Loop (COCO Pre-labeling -> Manual Verification)
- **Anonymization**: Source video names have been replaced with UUIDs.

## Dataset Structure

```
infactory-ai/referee-tracking/
├── README.md
├── metadata.csv
├── dataset_info.json
└── data/
    ├── visible/
    │   ├── {uuid}_{frame}.jpg
    │   └── {uuid}_{frame}.txt   # YOLO label
    └── not_visible/
        └── {uuid}_{frame}.jpg
```

### Metadata Fields (`metadata.csv`)

| Field | Type | Description |
|-------|------|-------------|
| `file_path` | string | Relative path to the image file |
| `video_source` | string | UUID of the source video clip |
| `frame_index` | int | Frame number in the original clip |
| `visibility` | string | `visible` or `not_visible` |
| `bboxes_count` | int | Number of bounding boxes in the frame |

## Usage

### Loading with Hugging Face Datasets

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset("infactory-ai/referee-tracking", data_dir="data")

# Filter for visible frames
visible_frames = dataset.filter(lambda x: x["visibility"] == "visible")
```

### Parsing Labels

Labels are in standard YOLO format:
`<class_id> <x_center> <y_center> <width> <height>`

*   `class_id`: 0 (referee)
*   Coordinates are normalized to [0, 1].

## Team

| Name | Role |
|------|------|
| **Valentino Constantinou** | Head of Infrastructure |
| **Dr. Mehdi Iranmanesh** | Applied AI Engineer |
| **John Kanalakis** | Chief Technology Officer |

## License

This dataset is released under the [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

**You are free to:**
- **Share** -- copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- **Adapt** -- remix, transform, and build upon the material

**Under the following terms:**
- **Attribution** -- You must give appropriate credit to Infactory, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
- **Non-Commercial** -- You may not use the material for commercial purposes without a separate commercial license from Infactory.

**Commercial licensing:** For commercial use, contact [hello@infactory.ai](mailto:hello@infactory.ai).

## Citation

```bibtex
@dataset{referee_tracking_2026,
  title={Soccer Referee Tracking Dataset},
  author={Constantinou, Valentino and Iranmanesh, Mehdi and Kanalakis, John},
  year={2026},
  publisher={Infactory},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/infactory-ai/referee-tracking}
}
```