Spirit of the sport and the competition
This ighly 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 the second part of January, Europe’s best men’s handball teams meet to contest the EHF European Championships. The women’s teams meet in December of the same year.
The big handball countries Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Russia along with many smaller countries and Eastern European nations (such as Croatia and Poland) are strong contenders, making the competition inclusive and adding to its democratic appeal.
Rights opportunities
As marketing and media partner of the EHF, Infront has been appointed to distribute all forms of media rights for the EHF EUROs and its qualification matches on a worldwide basis, including TV, radio and all new media. For the qualification matches Infront additionally handles some of the marketing rights. This combination of rights under one roof has proved highly beneficial.
Media production prospects
The host broadcasting for the EHF EURO is overseen by Infront and provides a state-of-the-art multilateral and unilateral broadcast production. This includes filming and transmitting a high quality signal as well as supporting broadcasters in their unilateral production, transmission and commentary facilities and services. All games are covered with up to 15 cameras and distributed in wide-screen 16/9 format with adapted and animated on-screen graphics. Starting from 2012 all games will be produced in high definition television (HDTV) quality.
Infront’s Broadcaster Servicing team supports contracted broadcasters both between and during the events. This role involves ensuring that contracts are implemented correctly, handling accreditation requests for rights holders and providing them with a first point of contact, as well as being the link between the broadcasters and the production operations.
Background appeal
In 2009, the European Handball Federation (EHF) and Infront Sports & Media extended their 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 since 1993.
Television coverage and audience figures have consistently increased over the past 18 years. In 2010 the events and qualification matches both achieved significant volumes of coverage. The men’s event, including qualification, reached 2,100 hours of programming and over one billion TV viewers. A cumulative audience of over 335 million and around 1,100 hours of broadcast coverage were additionally secured by the women’s event. Together with the audience figures from the previous event (1.2 billion in 2008) both broadcasters and viewers enjoyed an amazing two prong television success story.
Upcoming Events
The EHF EURO takes place every two years:
2012 Men’s European Handball Championship
15 — 29 January in Serbia
2012 Women’s European Handball Championship
2 — 16 December in the Netherlands
2014 Men’s European Handball Championship
12 – 26 January in Denmark
2014 Women’s European Handball Championship
7 – 21 December in Hungary and Croatia
2016 Men’s European Handball Championship
17 to 31 January; Applicants: AUT, CRO, POL, SWE, NOR
2016 Women’s European Handball Championship
4 to 18 December; Applicants: SWE, TUR
