Former Premier League referee David Coote has avoided jail after police found a sex abuse video featuring a 15-year-old boy stored on his laptop, a court has heard.
He was handed a sentence of nine months in prison suspended for two years at a hearing at Nottingham Crown Court, as a judge told him he had suffered a “spectacular fall from grace”.
Forensic analysis of Coote’s computer showed a two-minute and 11-second-long video had been viewed that showed a 15-year-old boy in a school uniform undressing until he was completely naked, before performing sexual acts on himself, prosecutors said on Thursday.
Coote made no obvious reaction as he was sentenced, but his hands were shaking as he left the dock.
The former match official, 43, appeared in court over a charge of making an indecent image of a child after the category A video – the most serious kind – was found by police in February last year.
He pleaded guilty to the charge at a hearing in October and appeared at Nottingham Crown Court this morning for sentencing.
Crown counsel Jeremy Janes told the court the offence was “aggravated” because it involved a moving image over two minutes.
Defending, Laura Jane Miller said the ex-referee is “deeply ashamed of himself and his actions”.
The disgraced referee first came to the police’s attention following a Football Association (FA) investigation into him over comments he made about former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp.
He was arrested at his Woodhill Road home in Nottinghamshire in February 2025, and a number of his devices were seized and analysed, police said.
The charge of making an indecent image of a child refers to activities such as downloading, sharing or saving photos or videos of abuse.
Passing sentence, Judge Nirmal Shant KC told the sacked referee he must understand such videos involve “real children being abused, with all the consequent damage that comes from it”.
Ms Miller invited her to consider a suspended sentence and an order to perform unpaid work, saying there was a “prospect of rehabilitation” and it would save Coote from “being a burden in the public purse”.
Speaking about his state of mind, Judge Shant told him: “You were a lonely man. You had a relationship that had broken down recently. You had mental health difficulties and you were consuming cocaine.”She also imposed a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and told him it would restrict his “contact and communication with children” and where he is allowed to reside.
Coote refused to comment on his suspended prison sentence as he left the court.
The ex-official was sacked by Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) in December 2024 after a video of comments he had made about former Mr Klopp in 2020 came to light.
His misconduct was defined as an aggravated breach under the Football Association’s (FA) rules because there was a reference to Klopp’s nationality. In August last year, he was also given an eight-week suspension by the FA over the footage.
He was also banned by European football’s governing body Uefa until June 30 2026, after a different video emerged of him snorting a white powder through a bank note while in Germany for the 2024 European Championship competition.
In January 2025, Coote came out as gay in an interview with The Sun, saying a lifelong struggle to hide his sexuality had contributed to the rant about Mr Klopp.
