Assignary and Arbiter

Arbiter

It calls itself “The Connected Platform For K-12 Sports and Activities”, and its home page says “Manage registrations, schedules, payments, facilities, and eligibility in one connected system.” Its products are Pay, Eligibility, Student Registration, Assigning Solutions, Event and Game Scheduling, Arbiter360, Facilities Scheduler and Athletic Websites, and it offers solutions for assigning associations, K-12 and governing bodies [1].

Visitors to arbitersports.com are sent on to arbiter.io by a permanent redirect [4].

Assignary

Assignary is where a club, league or association assigns its referees and judges, records the work and pays for it. A club, a league or a circuit for a judged sport keeps one schedule for everything it staffs, and one record of who worked it. That can be a referee crew on a match, or a judging panel on a division. A seat is one official’s place on a game’s crew. Assignary is new. Your club would be among its first. Assignary opens to new clubs in January 2027, and until then the way in is the waitlist.

Arbiter

Some state associations run their officials through Arbiter [3] [6] [7].

Wisconsin. The WIAA “has transitioned its officials licensing platform to ArbiterSports”, and “Officials must register through ArbiterSports in order to be licensed and considered ‘Active’ for the 2026–27 school year.” [3]

Louisiana. The LHSAA’s registration instructions for new officials, for the 2026–2027 school year, say “All registration is done through the ArbiterSports platform. This is a platform that you will use throughout the season to receive assignments, track your schedule, and keep up with important information for your association.” [6]

Alaska. The ASAA’s officials’ registration for the 2026–2027 season is an Arbiter registration, and its certification test is taken “through Arbiter”. [7]

Arbiter is used to assign games outside these three states too. Writing about registration for the 2027 spring season, the Georgia Lacrosse Officials Association says “We still use Arbiter to assign games.” [8]

Assignary

Assignary doesn’t replace a system an association requires. Assignary reads nothing from a federation’s or a state body’s records. Each clearance is recorded by the club that checks it.

Arbiter

Its home page says “Assign officials quickly and accurately with Arbiter One.” [1] Its assigning page lists “Match officials to games based on skills and availability”, “Automatically verify eligibility before assigning roles” and “Balance assignments with fair distribution tools.” [9] Its questions page says “Assigners can schedule individually or in bulk”, that the software “automatically checks for conflicts, travel limits, and eligibility before confirming assignments”, and lists testing, eligibility, clinics and training, video and background checks among Assigning’s features [10].

An assigner can turn on Self-Assign “at the sport, level, and position level or for an individual game slot” [11]. An official with the assigner’s permission can then assign themselves to a game, up to “your assigner’s pre-set limit” [12].

Assignary

For each seat, you see everyone who can work it. They’re free, close enough, certified and cleared for the day of the game, with no conflict and no other game in the way. You also see why everyone else is out. You choose who to offer it to. You send every first offer. Assignary knows what your club records: each official’s level, the clearances they hold with the day each runs out, and the conflicts they’ve declared. Assignary never contacts the body that issued it. So the record shows who vouched for it, and when.

Arbiter

Its questions page says “Officials can set their availability, travel distance, and conflicts, so assigners always see up-to-date eligibility information.” [10] An official blocks a whole day or part of one, and “your assigner will be notified of your unavailability when scheduling officials for those dates” [13].

Assignary

A seat goes only to somebody who passes every check. They’re free at that time and inside their own travel radius. They’re at the level the game asks for, and hold every clearance its sport requires when the game starts. They have no declared conflict, no other game in the way, and room under their own cap for the day. An official says which day they’re out, and no offer reaches them then. If an official says they’re out, their seats on games that haven’t started are offered to the next person who can take them. An official who’s out for a medical reason records it themselves. The club sees the dates and never the reason.

Arbiter

Its questions page says “Officials are notified by email, text, or through the Arbiter mobile app, and can accept or decline in seconds.” and “Assignments remain flagged until confirmed. Assigners can resend reminders, reassign coverage, or review response history to ensure coverage.” It says “Declines are logged automatically, allowing quick reassignment”, that “Emergency reassignments can be made on desktop or mobile, with officials instantly notified by text or email.”, and that “Assigning is fully web-based, but officials can also use the Arbiter mobile app for notifications and assignment management.” [10]

The app, Arbiter, lets an official “Accept new game assignments with ease”, “Add and manage blocks to control your availability” and “Track and manage game payments, then transfer earnings directly to your bank.” [5]

Assignary

An offer arrives by email. There’s no app to install. The offer’s link opens in the phone’s browser. Its mail names the club that sent it. It carries the seat, the game, its sport and level, when it starts and ends, the venue and its address, and the pay. The official answers Accept or Turn down. Every offer has a time limit. If nobody answers before then, the offer runs out. If someone turns an offer down, or lets it run out, it goes to the next person who can take it. Assignary asks the nearest first, and the better record of turning up breaks a tie. The game’s history shows that Assignary moved it. You can turn off a game’s automatic re-offers. Then a seat that opens up on that game waits for you.

An official can say yes before anyone asks. When a matching offer arrives, the seat is theirs the moment it’s sent. It doesn’t wait for the offer’s time to run out.

Arbiter

Its Help Center lists the reports an assigner can run, among them these three [14]:

• “Declines”: “Provides a list of declined assignments within a chosen date range. Includes the decline type and any comments submitted by the official” [14]
• “Games Assigned By” shows “which games a specific official was assigned to, and who assigned them” [14]
• “Payment Details”, a report that “breaks down who was paid, including name, sport and level, payment amount, payment date, and game date” [14]

Its home page names “Track evaluations and performance feedback” among what its assigning does [1].

Assignary

An assigner marks who didn’t show and who was excused. Every accepted seat on a game that has started is paid. The seats left out are the ones marked a no-show or excused, and any whose official disputes the record. An official can say the record of their seat is wrong. That seat stays out of the weekend’s payment until an assigner answers. The assigner answers by changing the record or by leaving it as it is. Each seat keeps a history of who offered it, who took it and who marked it.

An official can download a signed record of their own work in a club. It shows their offers and accepts, whether the work happened, and the clearances they hold. It has no pay figure in it. Whoever they hand it to can check it against a published key, without asking Assignary.

Arbiter

Arbiter Pay pays “officials, coaches, and all event staff”, by “Direct deposit, Arbiter Pay card, or electronic transfer” [15]. Arbiter’s questions page says “Once games are completed, payment details automatically flow into Arbiter Pay” [10].

Assignary

After the weekend, a club’s treasurer pays for it at Stripe’s checkout, by card, bank transfer or bank debit. Each referee and judge is sent the whole fee on their seat. The club pays at Stripe’s checkout. It doesn’t open a payments account of its own. Officials give their bank details to Stripe, never to Assignary.

How soon each official’s fee is sent depends on how the club paid. The waits, shortest first:

• A card the bank confirmed, or Apple Pay or Google Pay: as the charge clears
• A US wire for the whole weekend: as it arrives
• A bank debit from an account Stripe reports as a business account: 2 business days after it clears
• Any other bank transfer: 6 business days after it arrives
• Any other bank debit, the wait to plan on: 65 days after it clears
• A card the bank didn’t confirm: 120 days after it clears

Pay sent to an official lands in their Stripe balance first. It reaches their bank on Stripe’s usual schedule, at no cost to them. They can ask for it right away instead, which costs 1.75% of what is paid out, at least $1. They see the fee before they confirm.

One payment carries up to 50 seats. A bigger weekend is paid for in batches of 50, earliest games first. Each batch is a payment of its own, from the same Pay page. The Pay page shows what the club paid each official in a calendar year. It counts each payment on the date the money moved.

Arbiter

Its home page prints no price [1]. Its calls to action are “Book a Demo” and “Sign Up for Payments” [1]. Its Help Center ties the number of officials a group can hold to its license [17]. An import that goes past that number shows this message: “Reached max officials – The number of officials you are trying to import is more than your license of maximum officials allowed. Contact our Renewals team to expand your license.” [17]

For officials, Arbiter’s payee agreement, last updated 15 August 2024, says “Currently, there is no enrollment fee or monthly fee charged by Arbiter or the Trustee to maintain your Account as active or to receive Payments”, that Arbiter charges “fees for certain transactions on your Account, for example, fees for check issuances, ACH returns, stop payment orders”, and that its schedule of fees is at arbiterpay.com/pricing [16].

Assignary

Assigning is free. Each seat your club pays through Assignary has a price. There’s no subscription, no setup fee and no contract. Assignary charges for a weekend only when you pay its refs through Assignary.

For each seat you pay for, Assignary adds $3.50 + 3.5% by card, or $3.50 + 1.25% by bank. The percentage is worked out on that seat’s fee. Its referee or judge is still sent the whole fee. A referee or a judge pays nothing to take a seat or to be paid.

A season plan prepays the seat fee — the $3.50 part of each seat’s price — in a block, on one invoice paid by bank transfer: $3.25 a seat for 250 seats, $3.15 for 500, $3.05 for 1,000 and $2.95 for 2,500. A plan is sold on a quote, at no more than that price a seat.

These prices hold from October 6, 2026.

Arbiter

Its Help Center lists the reports an assigner can export, among them “All Officials By Group”, with “officials’ information such as name, address, city, state, email, Subgroup Eligibility, and Supergroup Eligibility”, and “Assignments”, with “date, time, teams, venue, and involved roles” [14].

Assignary

Import a .csv or .xlsx workbook and each row becomes a game. Before anything is saved, Assignary shows you every row. For a row it can’t read, it says what’s wrong. One file carries up to 200 games. The switching page lists every column the import reads, among them the day and start time, a match’s two sides or a panel’s name, the venue and its address, the sport and level, and the fee.

To bring the crew, send the club’s join link. Whoever signs up through it joins your roster as an official. Or type your roster in first, a name and an email address each, and each person is mailed a link.

You can put one weekend’s games into Assignary, offer their seats and fill them, while the rest of the season stays where it is. Assignary charges nothing for a weekend your club doesn’t pay for here. If your association requires Arbiter, that doesn’t change. Assignary doesn’t replace a system an association requires.

Arbiter

It imports games from an Excel template downloaded for each group, and its Help Center says “The information you enter on the template needs to match EXACTLY how it is on your Arbiter account” [18]. Its officials’ importer requires “Email address, first name, and last name” and imports one role at a time [17].

Assignary

A club’s owner can download one zip of spreadsheets for a range of dates. It holds the games and every offer of a seat on them, and the roster and members as they are now. It also holds what the club was charged and what its officials were paid. Each person can download their own record as one file from their Account page. An official’s signed record of their work goes with them to their next association.