EHF EURO - HANDBALL HITS NEW HEIGHTS

This highly physical and demanding team sport is fast and exciting to watch and more popular than ever before. The European game is growing robustly throughout all regions. Every two years in January, Europe’s best men’s handball teams meet to contest the EHF EURO. The women’s teams meet in December of the same year.

“In our experience, partnership has meant progress. Our relationship with Infront has helped us to develop the EHF EURO events significantly over the years and this is why we want to maintain continuity. We have chosen to prolong our marketing partnership with Infront early, based on a state-of-the-art business model, in order to ensure stability and allow for long-term planning.”
Tor Lian, EHF President


Links:

Online documentation of the EHF EURO 08


Infront and the EHF
The European Handball Federation (EHF) and Infront have extended their current long-term marketing partnership in respect of the Men’s and Women’s EHF EURO until 2020. The relationship is a long-running success story — Infront has been responsible for television distribution and marketing for EHF EURO events since 1993.

Qualifications and Championships under one roof
In addition to the handling of the commercial rights for the Men’s and Women’s European handball events, Infront is also marketing the media rights and some marketing rights of the qualification matches. This combination of rights under one roof is already bringing positive results. The Men’s EHF EURO 2010 qualification is now complete and the results of the 150 matches contributed significantly more coverage for European Handball — a total of over 400 hours. Additional coverage will follow with the Women’s EHF EURO 2010 qualifiers, which started in October 2009, played by 28 national teams throughout Europe.

Handball keeps on growing
The big handball countries, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Russia and many of the smaller countries and Eastern European nations are strong contenders, making the competition inclusive and adding to its democratic appeal.

Television coverage and audience figures have continued to increase over the past 10 years. The 2008 men’s and women’s events together achieved a total cumulative television audience in excess of 1.5 billion, with a total of more than 2,000 hours of programming. The January 2008 men’s event in Norway had more than 1.2 billion viewers, which also set a record for a single EHF EURO event. It was the most extensively covered and viewed tournament in the history of the competition. Infront secured agreements with more than 70 broadcasters. Overall, the tournament was broadcast in 85 territories — particularly in Europe, the Middle East and South America — with 1,100 programme hours.

The women’s event in December in Macedonia reached a cumulative viewing audience of 352 million — the third best result in the history of the event. The duration of the broadcasts increased substantially to a new record figure of 884 programme hours, an increase of over 75 % against the 503 hours for the comparable 2006 EHF EURO in Sweden.

Popular with sponsors
With the image of handball being exciting, international, demanding and competitive it appeals to a high income and well educated male audience of between 30-69 years old. In 2008 the semi-final found 8.5 million viewers enjoying the fast paced action.

Both the Men’s and Women’s events are well supported by a full complement of sponsors, indicative of their popularity and appeal. In 2008, the total brand visibility achieved from cumulated television coverage was 1,229 hours with visibility per sponsor reaching an impressive 136 hours.

The commercial hierarchy for the EHF Euro events consists of three categories: Official Presenting or Title Sponsor, Official Sponsors and Official Suppliers. This hierarchy has been developed to provide a variety of entry levels with tailor-made marketing opportunities for the companies taking part. Since the inception of the tournament, Infront has marketed the Official Sponsorship packages with complete success.

The contractual rights to each of the sponsorship packages include: rotating advertising boards; static advertising board and floor advertising; VIP tickets; use of logo and official mascot; logo position on event website; access to event photos and post event media report.

A full complement of sponsors
Both the Men’s and Women’s events are well supported by a full complement of official sponsors, this includes for the men’s event: AJ (Home and office furniture), Appel Feinkost (Delicatessen), bet-at-home.com (Betting services), Grundfos (Pump solutions), Henkel (Consumer Products), Mekkonomen (Car parts retailing), Spar (Food retailing) and Vola (Brassware design).