EHF and Sportradar strengthen referees’ integrity competence

As the 2023/24 European handball season has drawn to a close, the European Handball Federation has successfully concluded an integrity education programme for its indoor and beach handball referees.

The two-year course, which was launched in 2022 together with Sportradar Integrity Services, the EHF’s official integrity partner and a global supplier of sports integrity solutions, provided almost 300 EHF referees with the guiding principles and issues related to the integrity of handball.

The programme aims to safeguard the sport’s top European competitions, athletes, and stakeholders on a long-term basis and underlines the EHF’s commitment to protecting the integrity of its sport. It is a key pillar of its long-term association with Sportradar.

Beyond the integrity education programme, the EHF’s partnership with Sportradar continues to feature investigations into allegations of impropriety within the sport and use of its AI-powered Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS) to monitor all EHF events for unusual betting activities.

In the 2023/24 season, more than 1,100 matches were monitored by Sportradar with none of them deemed to be suspicious by the Integrity Services.

Martin Hausleitner, EHF Secretary General, said: “Progressive education of our referees, as they are one of the game’s most important stakeholders, is key to the prevention of match fixing. With the education programme, we wanted to help our referees understand why they must always act with the utmost integrity to protect themselves, their colleagues, competitors, competitions, relevant stakeholders and ultimately the reputation of EHF and the sport of handball.”

Andreas Krannich, Sportradar Executive Vice President Integrity, Rights Protection and Regulatory Services, said: “Sportradar Integrity Services has worked with the EHF since 2018, offering comprehensive support. This recently completed two-year programme of training covered topics relating to anti-match-fixing, plus digital and social media integrity. The scale of this education programme highlights the ongoing and proactive commitment from EHF to robust education for their referees, and we continue to partner to help protect the integrity of handball.”