No World Cup 2029: Kretzschmar regrets Saudi Arabia’s withdrawal from handball

Sport No World Cup 2029

Kretzschmar regrets Saudi Arabia’s withdrawal from handball

Status: 10.04.2024 | Reading time: 2 minutes

Germany’s handball icon Stefan Kretzschmar is concerned about the image of his sport

Source: dpa/Ronny Hartmann

Former national player Stefan Kretzschmar Handball is concerned about the future of handball as a global brand. The fact that Saudi Arabia is withdrawing from sport is not good news from a sporting perspective, says the German icon.

Former national handball player Stefan Kretzschmar regrets Saudi Arabia’s dwindling interest in handball and warns that the sport could lose global importance. “If the Saudis withdraw, that translates to saying that our sport has no relevance there and has no relevance globally,” said Kretzschmar in a post published on the streaming platform Dyn on Tuesday evening.

It recently became known that Saudi Arabia does not want to apply to host the Handball World Cup in 2029 and 2031 as planned. The desert state wants to concentrate on other sports and withdraw completely from handball, as DHB boss Andreas Michelmann told the magazine “Handball Inside”. The Club World Cup is also no longer scheduled to take place in the country on the Arabian Peninsula this year.

DHB President Andreas Michelmann

Those: Marco Wolf/dpa

Kretzschmar was concerned about the development. After all, from a purely sporting perspective, Saudi Arabia is a window for handball into the Arab and African world. “This window will close when they are no longer interested in us. Since we already have a problem remaining a global sport, this is not good news for us as a sport in general,” said the sports director of the Bundesliga club Füchse Berlin.

Saudi Arabia is investing heavily in sport

The 51-year-old appealed to the international associations EHF and IHF to develop a vision to make handball more global. He made the following suggestion: “You use a World Cup to make money and the following World Cup you have to invest money. You have to go to regions and countries where handball is not popular. To South America, to Asia, to Africa. I have to host a World Cup there and give out hundreds or thousands of free tickets to every game so that the kids can get into the hall.”

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Kretzschmar deliberately left out “the human rights issue” in his remarks. “I know you can’t, but I don’t want to address that in what I have to say,” he explained.

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Saudi Arabia has been investing heavily in sport for years through its sovereign wealth fund and has already entered the football, boxing and Formula 1 business, among other things. The official goals of the state plan “Vision 2030” are the diversification of the economy, less dependence on oil, opening up the country to tourists and attractive offers for its own population. But the kingdom is also accused of using its involvement in sport to distract attention from its human rights violations and to improve its image.