Expect referees to keep awarding lots of penalties at major soccer tournaments in the VAR era.

The spike in spot kicks at the European Championship won approval Friday from UEFA’s head of refereeing in a mid-tournament review of match officials.

The record-setting numbers at Euro 2020 are trending the same way as the 2018 World Cup, where video assistant referees were first used at soccer’s biggest event.

“One of the key points for this increase of penalties, of course, is related also to the implementation of VAR,” UEFA chief refereeing officer Robert Rosetti said in an online briefing.

The 14 penalties awarded so far at Euro 2020 in 36 games compares to only 13 given in the group stage at the past three tournaments combined, a total of 84 games.

The running total at Euro 2020 includes five penalties that were not initially whistled by the referee. The decisions were made after checks with the help of video monitoring at UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.