Handball World Cup – Despite the full hall in Herning: Handball on the decline

The Danish town of Herning, with around 51,000 inhabitants, located in the middle of the desert of the Jutland mainland, does not have many sights to offer. Except for the Museum of Contemporary Art, there is sadness. Nevertheless, the whole of Denmark will be looking at this place and especially at the huge exhibition hall in the south of the city in the coming days. The Jyske Bank Boxen, a plain, cubic building, had already been transformed into a party zone at the start of the 29th Handball World Championship.

A total of 12,397 fans flocked to a game on Tuesday evening, the outcome of which was as clear as amen in church. Even before kick-off, the spectators, all dressed in Danish red and white, celebrated their team, which is aiming for its fourth title in a row and is unbeaten in 28 matches. The enemy Algeria was responsible for the role of the perfect victim. In the end it was 47:22 for the co-host of the World Cup tournament, which Denmark is organizing together with Croatia and Norway.

Old world president

The pictures of the fully occupied stands in Herning are entirely in the spirit of the world association. Hassan Moustafa, the aged Egyptian president of the International Handball Federation (IHF), had already celebrated the championship as a success in the magazine “Handballwoche” before the tournament. There are promising grassroots initiatives all over the world that are promoting the popularity of handball. Countries like the USA developed and benefited from the World Cup finals expanded to 32 teams. “We are aware that this is the way in which handball can become a global sport,” declaimed the 80-year-old Moustafa.

Herning now represents a backdrop that handball propagandists couldn’t imagine better. The spectacle in the stands is the product of a handball enthusiasm that is probably unique in the world. Handball is played in almost every village in this rural region, and it is also extremely popular among women. Stars like Mathias Gidsel, the Danish world handball player of 2023, are worshiped like gods here. Against Algeria he scored ten times to the delight of his compatriots.

»Handball is on the decline in the IOC ranking of sports.«

Frank Bormann  Managing Director of the Handball Bundesliga

In fact, this enthusiasm is far from representative. Even in Germany, there is significantly less attention to handball outside of the big tournaments that are always held in January, even though the handball Bundesliga – claim: “The best league in the world” – has recently experienced strong economic growth. There is also a league in France that works reasonably well. Apart from that, things are looking bleak for the sport.

Unknown in the USA and China

The biggest problem with handball is that it hardly exists in the world’s largest sports markets. It is not established in the USA, China, Japan or India, for historical reasons. When handball, invented in Berlin in 1917, quickly gained many fans as field handball in Germany in the 1920s, sports such as football, baseball, cricket and hockey had long been popular there.

Field handball initially made it into the Olympic program in 1936 because Berlin was the host city. But indoor handball failed several times to be included in the Olympic Games after the Second World War. It was only when Willi Daume, a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and former handball goalkeeper, organized two test matches before the IOC session in Madrid in 1965 so that his African and Asian colleagues could at least get to know the game that the sport made it into the program.

World association head Moustafa, an 80-year-old Egyptian, has been preaching the song of a media-successful sport ever since, and the TV ratings in Europe are actually acceptable when the German handball players compete for medals at the Olympics. In reality, handball was already in jeopardy in 2005, when the reduction of the Olympic program was on the agenda.

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And that’s where it still stands today, as evidenced by last weekend. Because when the clubs of the Handball Bundesliga (HBL) met in Hamburg for an extraordinary general meeting to decide on new licensing regulations, the managers also discussed the future of their sport. “We debated how we can help the sport to be better perceived in the markets where it hardly exists so far, such as Australia, India or the USA,” reported HBL managing director Frank Bohmann. This should happen in particular with moving images that HBL supplies.

The HBL can’t do anything

Bormann is 60 and has headed the league organization since 2003. When he started, he saw US football as a marketing model. Given the recessive media development of his sport at the international level, he knows how precarious the situation of Olympic handball is – and doesn’t mince his words in this regard. “Handball is on the decline in the IOC ranking of sports,” he says. “That was a big topic for us last weekend.” Unfortunately, the Bundesliga only has limited options to help. »The HBL cannot save world handball.«

The IHF, the world association based in Basel, is actually responsible for this. Its boss Hassan Moustafa has presided since 2000 and has since earned a reputation as a master negotiator in the sale of TV rights; According to reports, there are more than 250 million Swiss francs in IHF accounts. But the IHF has so far failed spectacularly in developing the sport in key global markets.

An example of this is the USA, which will host the next Olympic handball tournament in Los Angeles in 2028. Against this background, the IHF has provided the US boys with wildcards for the current 2025 World Cup and also for the 2027 World Cup in order to gain experience at the highest level. In fact, the US handball players, who are coached by former Swedish professional Robert Hedin, won a World Cup game for the first time in 2023, and slight progress can be seen.

Institutionally, however, there were massive setbacks. The Forum Club Handball (FCH), the organization of top European clubs, has been suspending its cooperation with the US association since autumn – this means that the US association no longer has the opportunity to train talented players in European boarding schools or clubs let. It is reported from FCH circles that the new head of the US association is working with unfair methods. Adventurous reports had already reached Europe from overseas. Accordingly, the US association planned training camps with inflatable goals for US women’s handball.

From the club’s point of view, Jean Brihault, the former president of the European umbrella organization EHF, is a completely lost cause as the IHF’s special ambassador for the US market. The projects supported by the IHF to popularize handball in core global markets such as China and India have so far failed completely. Bohmann does not hide his criticism of the world association. “You can’t rely on the IHF,” he says. The world association is poorly positioned in terms of personnel and concepts. But it’s not just the top German official who is puzzled as to why the world association prefers to hoard the proceeds from TV rights in bank accounts instead of investing them in growth markets.

A change of direction is necessary

Bohmann is not the only one who fears that the glorious TV images from the World Cup from Denmark will only hide the problem. And the coming years may not cause IHF officials to change direction. Because in two years the World Cup will take place in Germany, for the eighth time – and absurdly again in 2029 (albeit organized jointly with France).

When asked about this, German national player Timo Kastening said it was fantastic to play a World Cup in front of your own crowd; that actually only happens once in a professional’s career. “I love playing in front of a full hall,” says the right winger from MT Melsungen. But he also thinks it’s great to immerse himself in foreign cultures, as he once experienced at the Youth World Cup in Brazil.

The Bundesliga professional also warns the responsible officials to finally take the initiative to prevent handball from developing into a German-Danish monoculture. “An exclusion of handball from the Olympic program,” said Kastening recently, “would be a catastrophe.”