GameDay have proudly worked alongside England Handball, the national governing body for handball in England, since September 2022.

Having initially used just some elements of the GameDay product suite, the relationship has developed to such an extent over the last two years that England Handball have now successfully undergone a much larger digital transformation, and one which will support the growth and prosperity of the sport for many generations to come.

But what has changed, and what have been the main benefits of embracing the power of technology with GameDay’s support?

Facilitating England Handball’s transformation

After a smaller-scale roll-out of the GameDay platform in September 2022, England Handball went on to launch their new organisational website, powered by GameDay, in March 2023.

Just four months later, the organisation launched their full GameDay Membership & Competitions integrated platform across the sport. The new system was built to be the home for a variety of organisational tasks, including managing player sign-ups, competition and score management and allocation of officials, with all data feeding through to the England Handball match centre.

As part of the transition to GameDay, England Handball now also receive advanced data and insights on participation within the sport.

When announcing the launch of their full GameDay Membership & Competitions integrated platform, the NGB stated that insights of this nature would help strengthen the relationship with Sport England and accelerate plans to grow the sport, in line with ‘The Ascent’ – England Handball’s ambitious strategy running from 2022-2030.

As the organisation’s Handball Development Officer Guillaume Eprinchard explains, the switch to GameDay from an alternative provider has helped open up a range of new opportunities.

He said: “GameDay is our membership system. It allows us to run everything to do with our members, teams, clubs, and another side of it is running our competitions.

“One of the good things that GameDay allows us to do is everything related with the website. There is very easy communication between the GameDay system and our website.

“It allows us to do tons of different things that we were not able to do previously.”

A platform built for handball

More recently, the relationship between GameDay and England Handball has included the development of ‘at-game’ live-scoring functionality.

This is something which has already been successfully implemented for a number of years across other sports, including the Courtside platform which was built for basketball.

Eprinchard described the potential of live-scoring fixtures at all levels of the sport as a “brand-new world”, but one which England Handball were ready to embrace in order to drive awareness and growth.

“We just started using the ‘at-game’ functionality this season, so we’re still at a pilot stage with that side of things,” he added.

“It’s a brand-new world for us, to be able to have the ‘at-game’ functionality and really run our competitions live, and have everything to do with the scoresheet, stats and team sheets on the go.

“Obviously, it was a big change for our clubs, but I believe it’s so much more efficient than what we had before.

“Once you get into the habit of how to use the system, it really opens a lot of doors for us to do different things with the data we get through the ‘at-game’ system.

“So far, so good. Obviously, there are still a few things to work on with the system, but we’ve had pretty good feedback from our clubs and the people on the ground using the system.”

Have clubs bought into the change?

Change is so often a scary proposition for stakeholders within any organisation.

However, the positive relationship between GameDay and England Handball has played a major role in ensuring club officials and members of the sport are confident in the new platform which has been adopted.

And with the development of ‘at-game’ functionality still in the pilot phase for England Handball, there remains the opportunity for the product to be tailored to further meet the needs of the organisation as it is rolled out on a far broader scale.

As Eprinchard explains: “Change is a funny thing, right? You will find resistance to change, however exciting you think the change you’re bringing is as an organisation.

“That’s why we have partners like GameDay, helping us through the change.

“They helped us through that change with our clubs – whether that be through workshops, meetings or cheat sheets to provide to our members so they can, little by little, learn how to use the system efficiently.

“We still have a little bit of that process to do, but we know we can count on the team at GameDay to help us.

“We are in constant communication with our account manager at GameDay about anything, formally and informally. It’s so easy to just pick up the phone if you have an issue you want to get sorted.

“The actual relationship that we’ve built is really good, really helpful and constant.”

Supporting all levels of the game

As a sport, England Handball operates from age-group level right through to the elite game.

Their performance pathway runs from schools to colleges, university handball to their elite programmes, ensuring that players can work their way to the very pinnacle of the sport.

There has never been a better time for the sport’s governing body to adopt such a forward-thinking mindset either. In March 2025, Great Britain’s men’s handball team made history by securing their first-ever title at the IHF Men’s Emerging Nations Championship – a significant milestone in the sport’s development across the UK, and a clear demonstration that handball in England and beyond is on an upward trajectory.

Eprinchard says England Handball’s work with GameDay will ensure that the organisation can cope effectively with larger-scale participation growth when the time comes, such is the digital infrastructure that is now in place.

“You have to imagine where we are actually coming from on the competition side of things,” he said.

“[We were] a lot like different organisations, going through spreadsheets and different systems, different difficult ways to send information out to the people involved in our competitions.

“[By partnering with GameDay], you take all of that out and actually work on a system that can organise the competition.

“What’s very interesting for us is the way we communicate all the information about the competition. We really enjoy the way GameDay’s ‘at-game’ functionality and the competition site can communicate with our website on the match centre.

“As a member, whether you play in a club or at a university, you can just go to the match centre and see all your upcoming fixtures and results and all the good stuff about your competition.

“All the information is in one place, which is a lot more efficient than what we used to do.”

Photos courtesy of England Handball