Battle for Generation Z
Is the handball fan dying out?
Loud, loyal – and quite old? Many handball fan clubs fight in vain for young members. Why the Bundesliga is still not worried about the future. And what Stefan Kretzschmar demands.
The Füchse Berlin fan club is loud. Without earplugs, you can hardly stand being in the immediate vicinity of the German handball champion’s supporters. But the fan club is also one thing: old. “We have around 210 members. The average age is around 60. Only around 25 members are younger than 30. It is becoming more difficult to find young members,” reported fan club chairman Anja Konopinski to the German Press Agency. Other Bundesliga clubs report a similar development.
Handball icon Stefan Kretzschmar repeatedly calls for the sport to be made more attractive for young people. “We have to develop further if we want to still be relevant in 20 years. If we don’t manage the transformation of digitalization, if we continue to ignore the entertainment factors of the young generation, then we will have a problem in a few years,” the former Füchse sports director recently warned in “Sport Bild”.
Study: Over 20 million people interested in handball
However, the numbers do not indicate an acute crisis. Handball is one of the most popular indoor sports in Germany. The drums are loud, the arenas are full. According to a study by the sports marketing agency ONE8Y on behalf of the streaming service Dyn – the study is available to the dpa – there are 23 million people interested in handball in Germany. 52 percent of fans from the Gen Z target group – those born between 1997 and 2012 – say that their interest arose in the last three years.
“First of all, you could say: It doesn’t matter whether there are young or old people sitting there, the main thing is that the halls are full. But I don’t see any reason for concern at the moment, especially since we have significantly increased our marketing with modern methods, especially for the younger target group,” said DHB President Andreas Michelmann to the dpa.
HBL: Increase in fans on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram
The Bundesliga is also looking calmly into the future. “Our target group is getting younger. The average age of handball fans is falling, the proportion of younger people is increasing,” reported HBL spokesman Oliver Lücke. He sees reasons for this, among other things, in more modern TV production, in the successes of the national teams and in the growing event character of games and tournaments.
The HBL says it is now increasingly reaching Generation Z, particularly through digital formats. According to this, TikTok has seen a 30 percent increase in followers over the past two seasons. Growth on Instagram is 27 percent, and on YouTube it is even 52 percent. “Handball is gaining young target groups,” concluded Lücke.
With the streaming service Dyn, the HBL also has a media partner who specifically addresses a younger audience with a team of young commentators. Dyn does not publish audience ratings or subscriber numbers.
How old is the TV viewer in handball?
Studies show that linear television in Germany primarily reaches an older audience. Handball broadcasts are no exception – even if live sport attracts an above-average number of younger viewers compared to other formats. “Handball is a traditional sport. Boys also watch big tournaments, but not so much at individual games,” said ARD sports coordinator Axel Balkausky. The age distribution in handball is “similar to that in other sports,” explained ZDF sports director Yorck Polus.
Almost six million ARD viewers recently watched the DHB Women’s World Cup final – 1.27 million of them between the ages of 14 and 49.
However, there are also counterexamples. In November, around 2.4 million people watched the men’s game against Iceland on ZDF. Of them, 351,000 were between 14 and 49, and another 522,000 were in the 50 to 59 year old group. If you don’t assume that an exceptionally large number of children under the age of 14 watched, that means: around two thirds of the audience were 60 or older.
How important are handball influencers?
Kretzschmar would like to see more handball influencers or streamers on Twitch in order to reach even more young people. “We also have to bring more lifestyle into our sport,” demanded the 52-year-old and appealed to the players to do their part: “More social media, our own podcasts and general formats.”
According to the sports marketing agency ONE8Y, around 50 percent of handball fans in Generation Z find testimonials important for their interest in the sport. The problem: There is still a lack of personalities who radiate influence beyond the boundaries of handball.
“We are still more convincing through authenticity, arena experiences and values and less through the nationally noticeable star cult of our players,” explained HBL spokesman Lücke. We would like to see more handball players taking on the role of influencers and brand ambassadors.
Although Mathias Gidsel is currently the best player in the world as a world handball player, his level of awareness outside the handball bubble is low. If you ask passers-by on the street about German national players, names like Andreas Wolff or Juri Knorr would probably come up – if at all. But otherwise?
dpa
