Handball is here: suspension clocks, empty goal, running clock

Handball is one of the hardest sports to follow on a small stream, and it has nothing to do with the camera. The game is fast, the score climbs into the twenties and thirties, and there is almost always something going on that the picture alone does not explain. A team suddenly has an extra player on the court. A goalkeeper jogs off and does not come back. Someone is sitting on the bench looking annoyed, and you have no idea whether they will be back in ten seconds or ninety.

Every club stream we looked at had the same problem. The handball was fine. The context was missing.

Handball is now a supported sport in ScoreLayer, with a Standard broadcast bar built around the parts of the game that are genuinely hard to convey: the clock, the suspensions, and the empty goal.

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A clock that behaves like the hall clock

Handball counts up. The clock starts at 0:00 and runs to 30:00 in the first half, then carries on from 30:00 to 60:00 in the second, so a viewer joining at 47:30 knows exactly where they are in the match without doing arithmetic.

ScoreLayer follows that. Pick 2H in the period selector and the clock jumps to 30:00 and starts, which saves you setting it by hand at every restart. Half time, full time, and a pair of extra-time periods are in the same selector, and extra time picks up where the second half stopped rather than resetting to zero.

The clock holds at the end of a half rather than ticking past it. Handball does not add time at the end the way football does, because the timekeeper stops the clock for every interruption as it happens, so 30:00 on the overlay means the half is genuinely done.

The digits are fixed-width, so the colon does not shuffle sideways when the clock ticks from 9:59 to 10:00. It sounds like a small thing. On a 60-minute overlay sitting in the corner of the frame it is the difference between a scoreboard and a jitter.

Suspensions that run themselves

This is the part that generic overlay tools never handle, and it is the part handball needs most.

A two-minute suspension is not a note you type into a lower third. It is a live countdown that decides whether a team is defending 6-v-5, and viewers want to see it tick.

Tap Start 2:00 in the control panel and a red chip appears beside the scorebug on that team's side, counting down on its own. When it reaches zero it clears itself, so there is nothing to remember and nothing to tidy up while the ball is still in play.

Each team has three slots. Two players off at once is common enough, three is rare but it happens, and the chips stack vertically beside the bug rather than squeezing into it.

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Two details matter more than they look.

Suspensions pause with the match clock. Stop the clock for an injury or a team timeout and every running suspension freezes with it, then resumes the instant you start play again. That is how the sport is actually timed, and it means you never have to nudge a chip back into sync by hand after a stoppage.

A suspension started during a stoppage waits. Tap the slot while the clock is stopped and the chip appears at 2:00 and sits there, holding, until play restarts. Which is usually exactly when you are entering it, because the referee has just signalled it and the ball is not yet back in play.

If the hall clock and the overlay do drift apart, each running chip has a plus and minus button that move it ten seconds at a time, plus a Clear if the player is back on early or the suspension was entered against the wrong side.

The empty goal, marked clearly

The 7-v-6 attack is now standard at almost every level, and it is the single most confusing thing a new viewer can see. The keeper leaves, an extra field player comes on, and if you do not already know the rule it looks like a substitution error.

One button per side marks that team as playing with an empty goal, and an Empty Goal tab appears under their panel on the overlay. Tap it again when the keeper comes back on.

It is a small strip of colour under the team name. It answers a question that would otherwise take a commentator fifteen seconds to explain, every single time it happens.

Timeouts, red cards, and the match title

Team timeouts show as small pips beside each side's score, counting down as they are spent. The default is three per match, matching the IHF rules, and there is a stepper in the control panel if your competition allows a different number, which youth and school leagues often do.

A red card puts a numbered badge next to that team's code. It stays visible for the rest of the match, so anyone joining late can see the side is a player down for good rather than for two minutes.

Above the bug there is room for an optional match title. Most people will use it for the venue and the competition, in the style of an international broadcast: HERNING - DENMARK. Leave it empty and the banner disappears entirely, which is usually the right call for a routine league fixture.

Team colours come from your setup and sit as accent bars on the outer edges of the bar, with the panel itself staying a fixed broadcast navy. Team names are abbreviated to three letters on air, so a long club name will not push the clock out of position mid-match.

Built for the club hall, not the arena

Most handball streams are one camera on a tripod at the halfway line, run by a parent or a volunteer who also has other jobs during the match. That was the design brief.

Everything above is reachable with one tap. There is no separate suspension timer to run alongside the main clock, no second device, no mode to switch into. You add goals, you start suspensions, you toggle the empty goal, and the overlay keeps itself straight.

If you have used ScoreLayer for another sport the setup is identical: create the scoreboard, open the control panel, add the overlay URL to OBS as a browser source. If you are new to it, the handball sport page walks through what the overlay shows and how the controls work, and the OBS setup guide covers the browser source itself.

You can also see the bug rendered live, with suspensions and an empty goal running, in the scoreboard gallery.

What is next

Handball ships with one style, Standard, and that is deliberate. It is the layout that suits a club hall camera: compact, high contrast, and readable at 720p on a phone.

The state model underneath it already carries more than the bug shows, so additional handball styles can be added without you setting anything up again. If your club or federation has a particular look in mind, or a competition rule the timeout stepper does not cover yet, tell us on the support page.

Handball is free to try on every ScoreLayer plan.

Create a handball scoreboard →