Some of the industry’s greats were represented at the world record game. Uwe Gensheimer, Patrick Groetzki, Hans Lindberg, Kentin Mahé and Torsten Jansen all took part when the game with the best backdrop for handball games took place on September 6, 2014. 44,189 fans made a pilgrimage to the Frankfurt Football Arena for the game between the Rhein-Neckar Löwen and HSV Hamburg on “Handball Day”. The record should last for almost ten years. This Wednesday, however, that much is already clear before the start of the home European Championship, it will be broken.
The setting couldn’t be better: the German Handball Association (DHB) is expecting around 53,000 spectators for the first continental title fights on the opening match day.
As in 2014, this is made possible by the move to a football stadium: the games between North Macedonia and France (6 p.m., Dyn) and the duel between hosts Germany and Switzerland (8:45 p.m., ZDF/Dyn) will take place on Wednesday in the Düsseldorf ” Merkur Game Arena”. And if the association bosses have their way, the world record crowd should give the national team the necessary push for a successful home tournament.
“A good pre-start tension”
“We are very excited, the home European Championships will be something very special. The opening game alone takes place on a scale that we have never experienced before in world handball. That’s why we’ve had good pre-start tension in the association for a few weeks now,” says Mark Schober in an interview with WELT. “Of course there is a lot of stress, but it is more of a positive stress. It’s a nice feeling when you know that after all these extensive preparations, things are finally starting,” says the DHB board chairman.
Mark Schober, Chairman of the Board of the German Handball Association
Source: dpa
Schober and Co. consciously accept that the start of the European Championship is quite expensive – in favor of an entry in the record books of their sport. “Renting the Düsseldorf Arena just for the opening match day is many times more expensive than renting a hall. The technical expenditure alone that we have in the football stadium on January 10th is around 750,000 euros,” explains Schober.
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“That’s huge. From a purely commercial perspective, it would have been better to have the two games between Germany and Switzerland and France against North Macedonia take place at a location that would continue to be used afterwards. Even with the world record attendance of more than 53,000 fans, this cannot be compensated for. But that was a very conscious decision on our part: We wanted to play this record-breaking game right at the start of the European Championship.”
View of the closed Düsseldorf football arena
Source: dpa
The fact that the state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia is predestined for the European Championship start of an indoor sport in a football stadium in the middle of winter has several factors. The multifunctional arena has a closable roof and the turf was removed from the stadium for the record game. Instead, like at music concerts, panels were laid on which the handball field was then placed. An additional grandstand was built around the field. Only a few stadiums in Germany have such requirements.
Rail strike as a problem
Everything is set up for a spectacle right at the start of the home European Championship. However, the strike by the locomotive drivers’ union (GDL), which was announced for Wednesday and will probably last until Friday evening, now threatens to torpedo the arrival of some fans and media representatives.
During the European Championships, Deutsche Bahn is the event and mobility partner of the DHB, which has negotiated special rates with the company: a one-way trip in Germany during the tournament costs 28.90 euros in second class and 38.90 euros in first class for spectators and journalists . But it will probably only be a good opportunity to follow the European Championships at the six different venues again from Friday evening.
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After all, interest was already huge in advance – and advance ticket sales were more than appealing. “The total budget for hosting the tournament is 28 million euros. We refinance the whole thing almost exclusively through ticket revenue, so we basically bear the economic risk alone,” explains Schober. “We said from the start that we had to sell 50 percent of all EM cards in order not to use up our operating resources. Now we have even reached our breakeven ahead of schedule, which is around 66 percent of the tickets sold.”
That is somewhat reassuring, because the high sales of EM cards means that, from a financial point of view, we are already on the home stretch before the tournament begins. Economically, you no longer have to worry. “This is quite remarkable because some European Championship locations such as Hamburg, Mannheim and Munich only play games without German participation. And yet ticket sales are very good there too,” says the 51-year-old association official.
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Handball coach André Fuhr
However, Schober and his colleagues don’t just have the monetary aspect in mind. In the decade of handball announced by the DHB, which began in 2023 with the organization of the U21 World Cup and is now continuing with the men’s home European Championship, they primarily want to polish up the image of their sport. “The primary goal of the German Handball Association is not to make money with such an event,” says Schober. They want to have happy and satisfied guests in Germany from the opening game in Düsseldorf to the final on January 28th in Cologne. This applies to both the spectators and the participating nations.
“Our goal is also to get as many people as possible excited about the sport of handball in order to become more socially relevant,” explains Schober. “We also organize international tournaments because we want to increase awareness and win more children and more fans for handball,” said the CEO. “All of this is of course closely linked to the sporting success of our national team. That’s why we would be very happy if our team performed, because then the probability of achieving the other goals would be significantly greater.”
