World Cup referee equipment comes from Germany (Feature)

By Tobias Goerke Jun 9, 2010, 11:35 GMT

Trechtingshausen, Germany - When a referee at the World Cup in South Africa shows a delinquent a disciplinary card on the pitch, Winfried Baaser will have reason to feel proud.

Baaser's company, b+d Allzweck Sportartikel, based in the town of Trechtingshausen in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, is namely the supplier of referee equipment for the tournament.

Aside from the bright yellow and red cards, the equipment includes whistles and match notepads.

The cards have rounded corners, a detail that is important. 'Imagine a referee wanting to show a player a card after a foul, and a sharp corner gets snared in his pocket,' remarked Baaser, 67, a former linesman in Germany's Bundesliga.

'That's terrible - a very embarrassing situation,' he said, adding that the referee's authority was at stake at such moments.

Baaser's company has supplied large amounts of equipment for world and European football championships since 1978. For the 2006 World Cup in Germany, it supplied not only referee equipment but almost everything the football matches required, for example goals, corner flags and substitutes' benches.

The company has annual revenues of some 10 million euros (11.9 U.S. dollars) and more than 30 employees. Its biggest seller remains the 'original' referee set, including disciplinary cards, whistles, stud testers, writing instruments and even a coin for the coin toss to decide which team attacks which goal.

Baaser came up with the idea for the company after forgetting his equipment for a cup tie in the 1970s. The company sold some 30,000 sets in its first year. Today it sells about 15,000 annually. 'Pent- up demand was enormous back then,' he said.

B+d Allzweck Sportartikel is currently working on an innovation: an electronic match report pad complete with recording device so that referees no longer need to note anything down. This, Baaser noted, would shorten interruptions of play.