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Revealed: The Premier League club that have benefited most since VAR was implemented

Published 15:27 5 Jun 2026 BST

Updated 15:31 5 Jun 2026 BST

Sammi Minion
Revealed: The Premier League club that have benefited most since VAR was implemented

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First place is a real surprise...

There can be no doubt that VAR — and whether it makes football stronger — is an issue that divides football fans like no other.

As well as occasionally doing its job properly, VAR has the potential to cause chaos, unrest and controversy.

Over the course of the 2025/26 season, there were 105 occassions in which VAR intervened with play to overturn wrong decisions, as confirmed by the Premier League's KMI (Key Match Incidents) panel.

The KMI panel is made up of former players, coaches, and representatives from the Premier League and Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO), who meet weekly to discuss decisions made the previous week.

While the KMI panel have only been in existence since the 2022/23 campaign, it is still possible to view VAR intervention data from previous seasons, right back to VAR's Premier League implementation in 2019.

Back then, it was the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) themselves, that would provide the stats.

As first unveiled in this report from ESPN last year, a table combining figures from both sets of data has was first created, demonstrating at this time last year, which club had benefited most from the league's video technology.

Now combining those figures, with this year's list of confirmed VAR overturns, released by the KMI panel and published by BBC Sport, we can view how this season's set of 105 interventions changes things.

The BBC provided their own table charting how the decisions worked for each club across the division.

By balancing VAR interventions that have gone in each team's favour, against those that have gone against them, it's possible to see which Premier League club have benefited most, since VAR first arrived seven years ago.

The only teams included in the following table are those that have maintained a consistent place within the Premier League over that seven year spell.

Seven-Year VAR Decisions Net Score, per ESPN and BBC Sport

Teams present all six seasons
Numbers are decisions, not points

The biggest surprise is the position of Arsenal.

Despite the Gunners coming out of the 2025/26 season without conceding a single penalty, and seeing none of their players sent off, they find themselves with a massive net negative position of -10 owed to antecedent conditions over the previous few seasons, by far the lowest position for any top six club.

Newcastle were the biggest winners, with a massive +14 decisions going in their favour.

The likes of Man City, Man United and Liverpool all take up mid-table positions, while now-relegated Wolves end in last place, on -15 overall.

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