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.

All forms of media rights
As marketing and media partner of the EHF, Infront has been appointed to distribute all forms of media rights of the EHF EURO and qualification events on a worldwide basis, including TV, radio and new media. It is also overlooking the production and the broadcaster servicing.


A first point of contact for broadcasters
Infront’s Broadcaster Servicing team supports contracted broadcasters both before and during the events, ensuring that contracts are implemented correctly, handling liaison on bookable services and providing a first point of contact for the right holders - the link between broadcasters and the production operation.

Overseen by Infront
Infront gives standards and oversees the entire production of the worldfeed to ensure a high quality signal. All games of the EHF EURO events are produced in HDTV (up from 2012) with a minimum of 12 cameras per game. Also TV graphics in English language are provided by Infront.

Provision of services
The new agreement between the EHF and Infront again includes the provision of a lot of additional technical services and consultancy to further raise the profile of the EHF EURO events and make them more appealing and accessible to fans.

Enhanced website
European handball is supported by an excellent official tournament website — www.ehf-euro.com. This platform has been greatly enhanced in recent years, offering fans an online video service for all matches. During the 2008 men’s event, 380,000 unique users from 165 countries around the world accessed the site.