Former Premier League referee David Coote has been given a suspended prison sentence after being found to have a sexual video of a 15-year-old boy in school uniform on his laptop.
The 43-year-old appeared at Nottingham Crown Court, where Judge Shant said Coote had suffered a “spectacular fall from grace” after being charged with making a category A indecent video, the most serious classification of such offences. The charge relates to downloading, saving or sharing images or videos involving the sexual abuse of children.
Coote was also given a 10-year sexual harm prevention order, which the judge said would restrict his “contact and communication with children” and limit where he is allowed to live. He was additionally ordered to complete 150 hours of unpaid work.
Prosecutors told the court that the two-minute, 11-second video showed the schoolboy undressing until he was completely naked before performing sexual acts on himself.
Passing sentence, Judge Shant said, “Those who commit this sort of offence must understand that they involve real children being abused, with all the consequent damage that comes from it.”
Coote had already been dismissed by Professional Game Match Officials Limited in December 2024 after an unrelated video emerged in which he made comments about the then Liverpool manager, Jürgen Klopp.
Jeremy Janes, prosecuting, said the earlier incident brought Coote into the public eye. “He had been filmed making comments about Jürgen Klopp – those comments went viral and put him into the spotlight,” he said. “There was a wider interest and investigation into his conduct by various tabloid newspapers.”
Police later searched Coote’s home in February 2025 and seized his electronic devices. The court heard that officers discovered he had transferred the sexual video of the 15-year-old from a hard drive to a laptop on 2 January 2020.
Coote’s defence lawyer, Laura Jane Miller, said he had been dealing with personal and mental health difficulties at the time and was “deeply ashamed by his actions”.
“At this time, there was an internal struggle with personal difficulties and an issue with his mental health. That followed the breakdown of a relationship and those personal struggles spiralled,” she said.
Miller urged the judge to impose a suspended sentence, saying, “Looking at the prospect of rehabilitation and whether there needs to be an immediate custodial sentence, I would invite the court to impose a suspended sentence of imprisonment. It would save him being a burden on the public purse in the custodial setting.”
Coote declined to comment as he left Nottingham Crown Court via a private exit, having been allowed to pass through an area normally reserved for witnesses before leaving through the entrance marked “probation liaison office”.
