Image Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

How Much Do NBA Referees Make?

Let's find out how much do the referees make in the NBA.

Image Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

In sports, the role of a referee is incomparable. Apart from officiating, the referees are liable to ensure the fairness in a game. In short, a referee’s role is not only restricted to monitoring for fouls, violations, and double dribbling.

When we talk about an NBA referee, he is a professional who is an officiant for the NBA. The referees work in a group and are responsible for ensuring fair results of a fixture. Not only this, but it is also their duty to maintain the sportsmanship between the rival teams. The job of a referee is not limited to a particular season, and they work throughout the pre-season, regular season and the playoffs.

Over the years, the NBA has seen several referees taking up the court and officiating a game. Names like Mendy Rudolph, Joey Crawford, and Earl Strom are considered as some of the greatest referees in the league.

Often perceived as something fun, officiating an NBA game isn’t an easy job. Keeping up the score tab and fouls aren’t the only limited roles that a referee performs. In fact there is a lot that goes behind the scenes that is often not acknowledged.

Considering how the job requires the officials to be on their toes (quite literally), it can be estimated that they make a good amount of money. But how much are they exactly paid? Let’s find out.

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NBA Referees Salary

The referees are not paid the same amount as the coaches or the NBA players, even though their job is as tough as the others. However, throughout their officiating career, they earn a pretty significant amount.

Like the players, the pay scale of the referees depend on their overall performance as well as the kind of experience they hold. This is not it, even the referees undergo a post-game and pre-game ritual, which ensures they are in the best mental and physical shape, considered ideal to officiate a game.

As per various resources, the salaries of first-year referees generally start from $600 per game. However, a senior official can be expected to pay around $7,000 a game. Their annual salary can go as high as $550,000 per year.

Apart from basic pay, the referees are liable to other benefits that include travel reimbursements, health insurances, playoff bonuses, and so much more. All these benefits are overlooked by the National Basketball Referee’ Association (NBRA).

In addition, the referees earn a pretty decent amount of money when they officiate playoff games. In a playoff game, a new official can earn somewhere between $800 to $5,000 per game. On the other hand, an experienced official is generally paid around $9,000 for an opening-round playoff game, which goes to as high as $29,000 for a conference final game and the NBA final game.

If we talk about the pay-scale of a G-League referee, it is significantly lesser than what the officials earn in the NBA. For the unversed, the G-League is the official minor league of the NBA, which acts as a platform for the developing players and the referees.

The referees in the G-League earn less, with their pay-scale generally ranging from $30,000 to $50,000 per season.

Highest Paid Referees in the NBA

The salaries of the NBA referees are not publicly available but the referees are expected to earn $7000 for a regular-season game and $9000 for a playoff game. Their salary for the Conference Championships and NBA Finals game can go to as high as $29,000, and they draw a handsome average annual salary in the range of $150,000 to $550,000.

Names like James Capers, Sean Corbin, Tony Brothers, Rodney Mott, and Scott Foster are the top-five paid referees of the league.

NBA

Garima Ranawat

Garima is a sports writer with around two years of experience in Indian sports and a newfound interest in the NBA. Inspired by the leadership of cricketing legend MS Dhoni, she wishes to bring in newer perspectives to the NBA fanatics with her writing.