The Key Match Incident (KMI) Panel, introduced during the 2022/23 Premier League season, is an independent body tasked with evaluating key decisions made in football matches.
The panel consists of five members:
- one from the Premier League
- one from PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited), the organisation responsible for refereeing in the UK
- three former players or coaches.
The primary purpose of the KMI Panel is to assess critical match incidents, such as penalties, red cards, offside decisions, and other situations that fall under the referee's jurisdiction.
These evaluations aim to provide independent and objective conclusions that reflect the fairness of each decision.
Tony Scholes, the Premier League's Chief Football Officer, explained: "Assessments of the officials used to be carried out by the PGMOL themselves, and the accusation was that they were marking their own homework. The level of credibility of the accuracy results was questioned by clubs and everyone else in the game. So we thought it was important to introduce some kind of independence and objective measure of the accuracy."
Panel members go through rigorous training to understand the Laws of the Game and how these laws are interpreted by match officials.
