Resumen
Even though this study focuses on referees in basketball, the approach we took can help to learn more about refereeing in other team sports, considering that, at least in professional team sports, there are usually teams of referees adjudicating a game. This is probably due to the sheer number of highly dynamic aspects of and around game action that have to be perceived to allow a high quality of referee decision making. Precision in such decisions cannot be accomplished by a single referee. However, the way in which the dynamics, rules, and conditions of other team sports affect how the team of referees is expected to behave in order to optimize their decision making, requires further research. In many sports (like soccer, American football), referees are assigned special responsibilities that might lead to certain patterns of gaze behavior different to what we observed in basketball. How far these patterns of gaze mean referees are able to perform high quality refereeing duties well as a team, has so far remained untested and unknown. Further research on this could have the practical applicability of incorporating better gaze strategies for high-quality decision making in team sports because referees are currently trained and advised to behave in a certain way without any basis for these instructions.