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Labor talks between the NFL and its referees fell apart this week – and they ended a lot earlier than anyone expected.
The two sides were supposed to meet Wednesday and Thursday, but according to sources who spoke with ESPN, negotiations wrapped up after just Wednesday morning’s session. They couldn’t make any real progress on a new collective bargaining agreement.
Here’s why this matters: the current deal between the NFL and the NFL Referees Association expires on May 31. The gap between what each side wants is big enough that the league’s already started looking for replacement officials for the 2026 season.
According to one source, the NFLRA wouldn’t engage on something the NFL really cares about – improving how well referees perform their jobs.
NFLRA executive director Scott Green pushed back hard in a statement. He said he’d made a counterproposal that the NFL rejected outright.
Today the NFLRA Negotiating Team showed up to what was supposed to be the start of a two-day session with the League to make progress towards a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Unfortunately, it was soon clear that the NFL did not arrive with the same level of commitment.
Green went further in his statement, saying the union asked for a response to their offer so they could move things forward. Instead, they learned nobody on the NFL’s side was even authorized to negotiate beyond the league’s original proposal. That’s when the league walked out after less than half a day of talks.
An email sent to NFLRA members later that day didn’t mince words.
The union told its members that the “lack of respect and recognition of our value to the game was an insulting representation of the current League’s position,” according to the email obtained by ESPN‘s Kalyn Kahler. The message also tried to reassure officials that this is just a negotiating tactic the NFL’s used before – an attempt to break up their united front.
The NFL Players Association jumped in Wednesday with its own statement.
This is not just a labor issue between the league and officials. This directly impacts the working conditions of our player members. We are closely monitoring the situation.
Timing here is interesting. These talks happened just one day after the NFL competition committee released a pretty significant rule proposal. If there’s a work stoppage, the plan would move a lot of in-game officiating decisions to the league’s command center in New York City.
NFL officials aren’t full-time employees – they work games and get paid through a mix of game fees, bonuses, meeting fees, preparation fees and other benefits. Last season, the average official made around $350,000 annually, according to sources.
The NFL’s offer includes a 10% bump in game fees across the board for regular season games. Officials working the Super Bowl could see their pay increase by as much as 30%, sources said.
But the league also wants changes to how officiating works. They’re looking to redirect annual bonus money toward officials who perform best and extend the probationary period for new refs (which is currently three years).
The union wants the opposite – they’re hoping to actually lower that probationary period, Kahler has reported.
