UPDATE: April Fool! Unfortunately there is no truth in this April 1st article...

FANS can have their say over decisions during a Scarborough Athletic match when a revolutionary VAR technology is trialled at one of their matches.

Athletic will be trialling the technology for FIFA ahead of this summer's World Cup in Russia when they host Brighouse Town on Saturday, April 14.

The FAN-VAR project is in the final development stages and uses a combination of fans' social media content and in-app polls to help determine the correct decision during matches.

Early teething problems with standard VAR have led to FIFA and UEFA fast-tracking the FAN-VAR application. This is aimed at improving on a lack of fan-engagement and lengthy decision-making with standard VAR.

With FAN-VAR, the video referee will see a live feed of all social content, including videos, messages and photographs and FAN-VAR app live polls alongside their standard VAR screens. This will help show the general opinion of the fans and the media in the stadium. This will help for a quick almost instant decision to be made helping to put the key decisions into the hands of the fans.

Johannes Holzmuller, head of FIFA technology innovation, said how FAN-VAR mixed, with standard VAR, could play a pivotal part in this year's Russian World Cup if the trials at Scarborough are successful along with other lower division clubs across Europe.

He said: “We have chosen Scarborough Athletic because they have an amazing average attendance for this level of football and their fanbase is extremely vocal and active both at the game and on social media platforms.

"They also have a brilliant TV channel which will allow us to test the combination of live video footage with the FAN-VAR stream to help assist the video referee.

"We have been in talks with the club’s board of directors over the last few months and they have been working hard behind-the-scenes to get everything prepared for this historic occasion."

Mr Holzmuller added: "FAN-VAR will help give clarity to fans in the stadium by increasing their engagement on key in-game decisions.

"The rise of social media and better connectivity in modern stadia has allowed us to bring forward our development of this ground-breaking technology.

"Fans will simply have to download the FAN-VAR app, choose the game they are attending and link their social media accounts, the rest is all controlled by our innovative software.

"I'm so excited, it has been three years of extensive research and development with a dedicated team to get to this point and now our technology is finally going to be used in a live match.

"The fans will love it and they will be able to finally help put an end to some dubious decisions they have received in recent key matches.

"If successful we aim to do a secondary trial at the FA Cup Final in May."

The FAN-VAR app was released yesterday for Scarborough fans.