How to organize a beach handball tournament?

Organizing a beach handball tournament can be a daunting task. Don’t worry we are here to guide you through the process and provide you with checklists, templates and material to get started. 

You can always reach out to us if you have any questions or just want to review your preparation with us. 

Target Group

You should start your planning process by deciding what the target group for your event will be:

  • Will it be a co-ed, men’s or women’s tournament?
  • Is it an elite or recreational competition?
  • How many days should the tournament be?

Location and Permits

You can host your beach tournament in a variety of locations.

Beach Volleyball Courts

If you have a beach volleyball court with at least two nets side by side (nets are in one line). You can usually fit a beach handball court across the two courts on either side of the net.

At the Beach

If you are lucky enough to live near the coast or lake you can usually make use of natural beaches. You should check with local or state organizations regarding any permit requirements. Most public beaches require you to submit a permit up to a year in advance! 
Make sure to also check the sand quality: Is it safe to do 360 spin shots? Is the sand free from trash (i.e broken bottles)

Indoor Beach Center

Especially in regions where you get snow, be on the lookout for indoor beach center. 

Each of the above locations come with their own benefits and challenges. If you have multiple options consider the following questions:

  • What is the sand quality like (softness, trash)?
  • What are the permit / rental costs?
  • Where will the closest restrooms be?
  • Will you have access to electrical power? 
  • Where is the closest hotel for teams to stay?

Liability & Insurance

Some venues will require you to have liability insurance for your tournament and it’s participants. 

Even if the venue doesn’t require it, it is important to think about it and either purchase one yourself, go through the US based handball organizations or have participants sign a liability release waiver.  

US organizations providing insurance for tournament organizers

There are two organizations in the US that assist organizers with insurance for handball events. Both require tournament organizers to sanction their tournament officially with the organization. Click the icons below to navigate to their membership pages for more information. 

USA Team Handball

The mission of USA Team Handball shall be to develop, promote, educate and grow the sport of Team Handball at all levels in the United States, and to enable United States athletes to achieve sustained competitive excellence to win medals in international and Olympic competition.

US Handball Union

At US HANDBALL UNION, we operate for the advancement of participation and competition in the sport of Handball nationally, to support, foster, develop, and otherwise grow the sport of Handball in the US, and, particularly, for the development of amateur athletes, coaches, and officials for local, regional, national and international Handball competition.

Set a Date

Sometimes the availability of a venue decides the date for you, but in general it is good practice to check in advance if the date you are looking at collides with local or national events. You can check our tournament overview for the year for all US beach tournaments and we also recommend to check with the US based organizers: US Handball Union Event Calendar, USA Team Handball Event Calendar.

Costs and Tournament Fees

Budgeting and setting tournament fees is probably the most difficult task if you don’t know where to start. Here is a breakdown of expenses and income you should consider when organizing a beach tournament:  

Income
  • Tournament fees
  • Sponsorships
  • Donations
  • Grants
  • Event Ticket Sales
  • Concessions
  • Merchandise
  • Social Media Revenue
Expenses
  • Permits / Location Rental
  • Insurance
  • Referees
  • Accommodations for referees/staff/volunteers
  • Food for referees/staff/volunteers
  • Beach Handball Goals
  • Beach Handball Lines
  • Beach Handballs
  • Safety Nets behind goals
  • Tents when outdoors
  • Officiating table equipment (i.e. scoreboard)
  • Live-streaming
  • Music Speaker
  • Bleachers
Example 4 Team Tournament

First budget all expenses:

  • $500 Permit
  • $100 Insurance
  • $200 referees ($10 per game per referee)
  • $200 room and board

Total $1000 in expenses.

Next you guess how many teams you may be able to attract: 4 – 6

To derive the tournament fees use the following formula: 

tournament fees = (#total_expenses – other_income + profit_desired) / #of_teams

Assuming our only tournament income are the participation fees and we want to break even, they should be set at

($1000 – $0 + $0) / 4 = $250 per team

Structure & Timing

The structure of your beach handball tournament will depend heavily on the number of teams you anticipate and how many days you have to hold the tournament. Below we will assume we are organizing a tournament for 4 teams. 

A beach handball match takes in theory 10 min (first set) + 5 min (half time) + 10 min (second set) + >5 min (shootout) ~ 30-40 minutes. It is recommended to allot 35 to 40 minutes per match in the schedule. First time organizers should use 40 minutes to leave enough buffer for unexpected delays. 

The most common structure for beach tournaments is to have a group stage, followed by a placement round (cross-overs). However you may also decide to put all teams in one group and play a round robin competition. The mode you choose will dictate the number of matches that will be played. I.E When organizing a 4 team tournament a round robin only mode results in 6 matches / 3 games per team (6*40 min = 4 Hours Net Game Play), while added cross over and finals results in 10 matches / 5 games per team (10* 40 min = 6 Hours and 40 Min Net Game Play).

Our recommendation is to keep the game count per team per day to 3-4 games. The quality of competition will start to suffer with 5+ games per team per day.  

If your Net Game Play exceeds your day limit you should consider having multiple courts or spread your tournament over multiple days. Remember that if you double the courts you will also need to double the amount of referees, timekeepers and score-keepers.

Since you won’t know until a couple weeks before your event how many participants you will have it is recommended to prepare multiple possible event schedules for different number of teams.

Setting up Registration

You are ready to set up registration for your event. Every tournament organizer may like a different system. There are pay to use systems that make collection of tournament fees easier, but may come at a cost. If you are looking for a free solution we can recommend to use a Google Form to collect your tournament registration. 

Let’s assume you want to organize a co-ed tournament allowing teams and free-agents to sign up, then you should collect the following information:

  • Name of the attendee
  • email
  • phone number
  • Age Group (U18/adult)
  • register as part of a team?
  • Skill level in beach handball? Choose from: Never played, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
  • Skill in team handball? Choose from: Never played, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
  • Add additional questions if you are looking for volunteers, referees, help at setup/breakdown
  • Add any liability waiver you want athletes to sign
  • Add any participation / image release you want athletes to sign

Promotion

After setting a location and a date it is time to start promoting your event. We recommend to advertise your event on social media (instagram, facebook, etc.). If you tag us in any of the platforms we are happy to re-share any content to help the promotion. You can also reach out to us and discuss any additional ideas, assistance (instagram take-overs). If you sanctioned your tournament with USATH or US Handball Union they will assist you in promotion and will share your tournament invitation with their registered member clubs.

What content should you have prepared:

  • Initial “Save the Date” post
  • Tournament details with register now link
  • Hype Posts: share teams as they register, highlight your venue, sponsors etc. 
  • Tournament Schedule (one per day)
  • Post-game results post
  • Tournament winner
  • All-star team post
  • Thank you to volunteers, sponsors, hosts
  • Live content from tournament (images, live-stream highlights)

Court Setup and Equipment

You should plan between 1-2 hours for the court setup and 1 hour for court breakdown. We recommend to have ~5 volunteers to speed up setup and distribute the tasks.

Court Equipment (per court)
  • 2 Handball Goals
  • 1 Set of Beach Handball Lines
  • 4 Beach Handballs (8 if men’s (size 2) and women’s (size 1) competition)
  • 2 Rakes 
  • 1 Table
  • 2 Chairs

Optional:

  • 2 Safety Nets
  • 1 Tent
  • 2 Bowls/boxes for behind the goals (should fit a beach handball)
  • Fence around the court 
  • Advertisement (Banners / Posters)
  • Music Speaker
  • Generator
  • Additional chairs for delegates/team staff
  • Bleachers
Officiating Table Equipment (per table)
  • 2 Team Time-out cards (Green Cards)
  • 2 Suspension Confirmation Cards
  • 8 Staff Identification Cards (2x A, 2x B, 2x C, 2x D
  • 1 Red Card
  • Whistle
  • Stopwatch
  • Scoreboard
  • Match Report (1 per game)
  • Pens 
  • Game Timer (if scoreboard has no time function)

Live Streaming

Live Streaming your event is a great way to boost your event and attract additional sponsors and teams. In addition it helps the sport itself grow and be discovered by a larger audience. 

From the tech savvy to the non-tech user, live streaming has become very accessible in the recent years. We want to highlight a couple of ways you can live stream your event:

Do it yourself social media and streaming software

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitch offer easy to use self-streaming features. From simply live streaming from your phone, to connecting streaming software like (streamlabs or Open Broadcast Studio [OBS]). 
You can place your phone/camera on a tripod or position it in the corner overlooking the entire field. Placing it on a tripod requires someone to operate it (unless you have an auto tracking camera).

To add a scoreboard to your broadcast you will need to use a streaming software. You can point a second camera permanently on the scoreboard and overlay it in your broadcast or use plugins to display one in your stream. If you use a plugin you will most likely need another person to track the score. 

The more you are willing to invest in terms of people operating the stream as well as equipment the higher is the production value you produce. However especially if you are short on volunteers or are intending to play yourself and can’t always be concerned if the stream is running you may need to make trade-offs. 

USA Team Handball Streaming Platform

USA Team Handball offers all it’s registered clubs and sanctioned event hosts free access to the Joymo Share app. The event will be live stream to usateamhandball.tv.

All you need is a phone or ipad, a tripod and an internet connection and you are ready to stream with the Joymo App. It allows you to track the score in the app as well, so you viewers can follow all the action.

Hire professionals

From better equipment to higher production value, if you are willing to pay for it hiring a professional company can be the right option and frees you from having to worry about the livestream. Below you can find some live stream service vendors you can reach out for your event:

Streamography

Streamography provides turn-key Livestreaming services that can meet any budget. From high-end multi-cam productions with instant replay, to professionally done single cam productions with scoreboard, simple graphics and commercial insertions. We also build Livestream Interactivity features, such as Live Chat, Polls and clickable video links allowing you to get closer to your audience than ever before!

– Pricing starts at: $850 (Pricing is subject to change depending services requested, travel, etc.)

Key Information:

  • Company or personal name: Streamography (Andrew Nicastro)
  • Contact email: andrew@streamography.com
  • Phone number: 978-810-0553
  • Based out of: Boston MA (but has a network of Streamographers around country)

Pricing starts at: $850 (Pricing is subject to change depending services requested, travel, etc.)