Handball Performance-Index: Data-based, transparent, fair
Data-based. Transparent. Fan-focused. For the 2020/21 season, Handball-Bundesliga GmbH is introducing a new benchmark for evaluating the performance of all LIQUI MOLY HBL players. The Handball Performance Index was designed in cooperation with Deutsche Kreditbank AG and selected experts from top-level sports and science. It uses selected statistics from all players to evaluate, analyze and compare their athletic performance at all positions.
"For decades, I've collected my own data and maintained my statistics to get a picture of my players' performance and effectiveness. The possibilities that exist today to access data, in some cases in real time, are of course a great advance and make the work easier," says Alfred Gislason, DHB-Coach. Gislason, who was a member of an eleven-man task force, played a key role in the creation of the Handball Performance Index during a workshop.
They focused on the following questions: Which statistics are really relevant for assessing performance in professional handball? How should the different metrics be weighted? And which statistical considerations have to be taken into account for the calculation of the Handball Performance Index? To this end, the task force, which was put together jointly with the DKB and consisted of experts from sports and science, drew up a workable concept. This was further developed in additional workshops with several active players from the strongest league in the world. Handball stars such as Patrick Wiencek, Jannick Green and Marcel Schiller shared their experiences and assessments of the position-specific design of the HPI with the expert commission.
In September 2021, the HPI Task Force met again in Düsseldorf to further develop the HPI. Task Force member and Sky commentator Florian Schmidt-Sommerfeld sums up the workshop as follows: "The exchange with so many handball maniacs was sensational. Hearing how players and coaches think about statistics, but also preparing the numbers so that they have scientific significance, was extremely exciting. One goal was: to make the HPI even more comprehensible. The values on the new scale are learned quickly and are thus almost self-explanatory. It's so easy for anyone interested in sports to understand what a top performance is."
In intensive discussions in small groups, the main focus was on the weighting of the individual actions and the presentation of the index. The result is a new scale up to 100, which is intended to contribute to easier access for all sports enthusiasts as well as a more mature evaluation of individual game situations and better comparability of the positions among each other.
Former world-class left winger Dominik Klein was also heavily involved in the development of the Handball Performance Index: "The quality and expertise of the task force participants was exceptionally high, and the discussion and exchange at a correspondingly high level. It was interesting to see how different the evaluation of game efficiency and effectiveness actually is and which factors can and should play a role."
The task force was composed of the following people:
- Frank Bohmann (Managing Director of Handball-Bundesliga GmbH)
- Alfred Gislason (DHB-Coach)
- Dr. Patrick Luig (DHB-Coach National Science)
- Dominik Klein (former HBL player)
- Martin Strobel (former HBL player)
- Johannes Bitter (player, TVB Stuttgart)
- Karsten Schäfer (Co-coach, TVB Stuttgart)
- Klaus Gärtner (Co-coach, Rhein-Neckar Löwen)
- Prof. Friedemann Schwenkreis (Professor of Business Informatics, Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University)
- Oliver Brosig (Graduate statistician, PlayerScore)
- René Prüßner (Sports scientist, Kinexon)
Frank Bohmann, Managing Director of Handball-Bundesliga GmbH: "Our fan experience world touches and is an important part of the fan's everyday life. Here we tell stories, visualize emotions and are in constant dialog with our fans. Together with DKB, we prepare the outstanding performances of our players for our fans in a data-based, transparent, tangible and, above all, comparable way. I am sure that this innovative offer will be used by players, clubs and especially our fans. For us, it is a further, consistent step into the digital age, which we are taking together with our partner Deutsche Kreditbank."
