Physical Demands of Handball Referees: A Big Data Analysis between the EHF Men's and Women's EUROs 2022

Handball referees face significant physical demands during the games that can influence the accuracy of their decisions. The aim of this study was to compare the movement profile of the referees during the men's and women's EHF 2022 EUROs. A total of 60 referees were evaluated using a local positioning system which provided data on their total distance, pace, accelerations, decelerations, and time spent in different speed zones. To automate the proposed methodology, a system was designed based on three phases: 1) capture of information on the activities and the context of the match through sensor networks, the LPS system and WebScraping techniques; 2) information processing based on Big Data Analytics; 3) extraction of results based on a descriptive analytics approach. The analysis revealed that referees in the women's tournament covered greater total and high-speed distances, but the accelerations were greater in the men's championship. Despite these differences, the referees' running pace, analyzed in fixed 5-min time intervals, followed a similar pattern across tournaments, identifying the first 10 min of play as the most demanding scenarios. These findings highlight the importance of adapting physical training of referees according to the specific demands of each competition.