Catch the Insights: Three hosts, one goal — attracting more people to women’s handball

The third article in our special series 'Catch the Insights' provides an overview of the cooperation between the Women's EHF EURO 2024 organisers from Austria, Hungary and Switzerland.

For the second time after 2022 – Slovenia, North Macedonia and Montenegro – the Women’s EHF EURO 2024 is organised by three countries and in four venues. Since their common bid, the Austrian, Swiss and Hungarian federations had a very close cooperation until the successful start in Innsbruck, Basel and Debrecen on 28 November.

But why did the trio choose to jointly host the EHF EURO 2024?

“The standards of organising an EHF EURO event are very high, and it’s a big challenge to bring it to life with 24 teams. Sharing the organisational and financial loads of an overall EURO event with 24 nations was important. At the same time, making the EHF EURO event available across Europe was an important factor as well,” says Ferenc Ilyés, president of the Hungarian Handball Federation ( Magyar Kézilabda Sz?vetség ).

Roger Keller , an experienced European championship project manager in Switzerland, adds: “For the first time, 24 nations are taking part in a women's European championship. This means that a size has been reached that makes it difficult for a handball country like Switzerland to organise the entire tournament on its own. That's why we joined forces with Austria and Hungary.”

The expansion to 24 nations at the Women’s EHF EURO 2024 also gives “medium-sized nations the opportunity to become part of an EHF EURO,” says Bernd Rabenseifner, secretary general of the Austrian Handball Federation ( Handball Austria ), and adds: “The Central European axis of Switzerland, Austria and Hungary offers the ideal platform for the first EURO with 24 nations for the whole of Europe.”

Challenges along the way

Switzerland hosted the Men’s EHF EURO in 2006, Austria were the organisers of the Men’s EHF EURO 2010 and – alongside Norway and Sweden – 2020. Hungary are the most experienced hosts of this trio, having organised the Women’s EHF EUROs 2004 and 2014 (together with Croatia) and the Men’s EHF EURO 2022 (with Slovakia). Alongside many Younger Age Category events, they also organise the EHF FINAL4 Women.

“All three nations have experience organising EURO events in the past 20 years. Many of the local organising committee (LOC) members are the same, as they were at previous events, which helps a lot when preparing for the event. In Hungary 80 to 90 per cent of the LOC were involved in previous international handball events, so their experience and expertise were essential in our successful preparation,” says Ilyés. However, having more than one party involved in the organisation, brings always some challenges.

“To harmonise almost all areas of the organisation between the three countries was not that easy, due to the different characters of the three nations. What was an advantage in the bidding, was sometimes challenging in the implementation,” explains the president of the Hungarian Handball Federation.

“To organise the 2020 European Championship certainly helped us, we had very positive feedback at the time,” emphasises Rabenseifner.

Support from the public sector also helped. “Without additional funding, this would not have been possible, the City of Vienna and the Austrian Ministry of Sport helped us extremely quickly.”

All sides praise the smooth cooperation among the EHF EURO 2024 hosts.

“It all fitted perfectly together, from the bidding phase, to the start of the event. The combination of the characters of the three nations fitted really well together,” says Rabenseifner, and the Swiss project manager, Keller, agrees with him.

“The cooperation with Austria and Hungary was very good. We were able to solve many of the overarching challenges and problems together. The biggest challenges, however, were the local ones: in Switzerland, in particular, the entire ticketing system. But when you see matches in front of almost 4,000 fans – even though Switzerland isn't playing – we can say that we have achieved a lot,” shares Keller, highlighting the importance of solution-oriented cooperation with the EHF, and the Hungarians agree.

“Beside the high standards, EHF has a strong leading role in the preparation phase of the EURO events, and that helps a lot the organising nations all the way up to the tournament. Due to the fact that the three nations already organised several events together with the EHF, our partnership was smooth from the beginning where coordination is especially important,” says Ilyés.

Working together towards a common goal

Together, all three organisers and the EHF share a common goal – to promote women’s handball. “The most important priority was to give a boost to women’s handball in all three countries and across Europe. It was especially important in Austria and Switzerland, where women’s handball is not amongst the most attended team sports, at the same time it was also important in Hungary to bring the event to as many fans of handball as possible,” Ilyés underlines.

“We want to have a lasting impact, especially in the Basel area. Children should play handball more often again, and for that they need female idols to look up to. And Basel, the former handball stronghold, should become one again,” says Keller, talking about Switzerland’s goals.

The Austrian federation have the same approach to attract more children to handball, mainly around their host towns Vienna and Innsbruck.

“With special offers for schools and clubs, the focus was deliberately placed on the youngest target group in order to get them into the halls. Feeling, experiencing, and absorbing the atmosphere of a women's handball European championship creates emotions and memories. Children develop idols that they want to emulate in order to be able to stand on such a stage themselves. The EURO school campaign enables entire classes to experience a game in the preliminary round in Innsbruck or the main round in Vienna live on site,” says Bernd Rabenseifner.

The same applies to Hungary, mentions Ilyés, and concludes: “We think that our biggest challenge in handball across Europe is to make our sport more and more attractive to the youngsters. Even though we have the sport itself, its speed and the passion that naturally comes with it on court and on the stands as well, we also need to provide something extra, some special features both inside and outside the arenas, not even mentioning social media.”

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