The rule gives the coaches of SC Magdeburg, Barça, Paris Saint-Germain HB, and Barlinek Industria Kielce one opportunity per match to immediately challenge a call made by a match official through the electronic team timeout buzzer. The challenge will lead to a video replay of the action in question.
Each team is allowed only one challenge per match, regardless of whether the challenge is successful or not.
Challenging a referees’ decision, however, costs a team timeout – but if the challenge is successful, the team receives their timeout back. Therefore, a coach can only call a challenge as long as not all three team timeouts in the match have already been used.
The challenge must follow immediately after the disputed call, and can only refer to situations in which video replay can be used – including whether a goal is allowed or not, disqualifications, faulty substitutions, whether players are attempting to mislead referees, fights on court, and game-changing situations in the last 30 seconds of the match.
A challenge is only successful in case of “clear and conclusive visual evidence” that the initial decision was incorrect.
The new regulation was first implemented at the Men’s EHF EURO Cup 2024 match between Germany and Spain on 30 April and also applied to the EHF FINAL4 Women 2023 in Budapest on 3/4 June but was not actually used by the coaches on both occasions.
