The referees nominated for the DELO EHF FINAL4 in Budapest this weekend (29/30 May) and the EHF FINAL4 Men in Cologne (12/13 June) will be equipped with state-of-the-art communication systems following an agreement between the European Handball Federation and French company VOGO.

The system in use will be VOGO’s VOKKERO ELITE communication system. It provides not only a high audio quality in any noisy environment and a strong robustness to interferences but enables the EHF to make the next step to improve the referees’ performance.

An integrated recorder stores the conversations for possible post-match analyses, while the system also has the option to include external signals as well as deliver the live communication to an external source, enabling, for example, a TV audio feed.

George Bebetsos, EHF Refeeree Programme Coordinator, said: "A clear communication between the two referees leads to better games control, greater reliability and eventually optimised decision making. We are doing everything to provide our referees with cutting-edge technology to support their performance. With its additional features for receiving external signals and distributing the audio externally, the new communication system has the possibility to become a game changer for us."

Malik Sayadi, Business Developer Sport at VOGO, said: "We are proud to equip the EHF’s referees with our VOKKERO ELITE professional communication systems for these top level competitions. It will allow referees to feel more comfortable thanks to the high audio quality and increases the reliability of the communication during important and critical events as the result of its strong robustness to interferences."

We are building a strong, long-term partnership with the EHF to provide new opportunities in the future, like allowing them to broadcast the audio from the referees on TV, integrate video refereeing in their competitions or recording the conversation with the embedded SD card recorder for educational purposes."

The referees for the DELO EHF FINAL4 have already been nominated; the nomination for the EHF FINAL4 Men in Cologne will follow in due course.

DELO EHF FINAL4 - 29 & 30 May in Budapest, Hungary

Semi-final 1: Györi Audi ETO KC vs Brest Bretagne Handball
Referees: Marta Sa and Vania Sa (Portugal)

Semi-final 2: Vipers Kristiansand vs CSKA
Referees: Vanja Antic and Jelena Jakovljevic (Serbia)

3/4 placement match
Referees: Ioanna Christidi and Ioanna Papamattheou (Greece)

Final
Referees: Cristina Nastase and Simona Raluca Stancu (Romania)