The cumulative television audiences for both 2006 European competitions (men’s & women’s events combined) exceeded the benchmark level set in 2004 of a viewing audience of one billion worldwide. The two tournaments, held in Switzerland and Sweden, reached a cumulative audience of 1.2 billion viewers, with more than 1,200 hours of programming.
The women’s championship took place from 7-17 December 2006. As one of the European Handball Federation's (EHF) premier events, it was transmitted in more than 60 countries and territories by close to 80 television and radio broadcasters between Greenland and Australia. TV4 Sweden acted as host broadcaster, offering live signals from all 47 games.
The broadcast report is based on an independent programme analysis, including information provided by broadcast partners worldwide. The report was compiled by the German communication research agency Sport+Markt AG on behalf of Infront Sports & Media AG, the EHF's exclusive television and marketing partner.
The report is one of the most comprehensive to date and is seen as providing a conservative estimate for the event's total coverage. This is because several markets in the Middle East, Asia as well as the Brazilian market were not able to provide audited audience data to meet the full criteria of the study. If unaudited data from these markets was taken into account, the total figure of 440 million would be even higher.
Infront has increased the television coverage of the Women's European Handball Championship significantly over the history of this event. Both the 2002 event in Denmark and the 2004 competition in Hungary broke all previous records in television broadcast terms. The most recent championship comfortably exceeded this: The total transmission time grew by over 26% and the cumulative audience figures increased by more than 15% (based on the audited cumulative audience) compared to the last Women's Championship in 2004.
The 2006 television report demonstrates that coverage reached virtually every European country. Extensive television coverage was also reported from countries not represented in the competition, such as Belgium (25 hours). Both final matches were also transmitted by Eurosport Asia in the territories of Australia, Indonesia, the Maldives, Myanmar and Thailand. Worldwide news coverage with a record total duration of 1:15 hours was available trough Deutsche Welle TV, Sport News TV and Trans World Sport.
The official tournament website, www.euro06.com, which was produced jointly by the EHF, the Swedish Handball Federation and Infront, gave fans extensive information about the event, participating nations and players. It received 414,338 visits from 175,000 unique visitors during the championship. The result was an increase of over 20% in visits and 62% in unique visitors respectively compared to the 2004 event website. More than 70,000 fans used the new service to watch the video highlights of the event online.
Tor Lian, President of the EHF, said: “This event has shown that there is a growing audience for top quality women’s sport, as well as buoyant interest in handball. At a time of audience fragmentation, this shows that handball is able to maintain and increase audience share – this is very impressive and we are pleased that both our sport and our partners will benefit from the resulting exposure. The next Women’s European Championship (Dec. 08) will take place in FYRO Macedonia, where we will strive to continue this trend; we are expecting full arenas and TV viewers in all corners of the globe.”
Stephan Herth, Infront’s Executive Director Summer Sport, added, “The new benchmark of a 1.2 billion cumulative audience emphasises both the growing appeal of the European Handball Championships and Infront’s success in marketing the media rights for last year’s competitions. The international distribution has been very much on target, in terms of its ambitions for wider coverage and more viewer choice worldwide.”
Infront has acted as the EHF's exclusive commercial partner for 13 years. In 2004, both partners renewed their cooperation until 2010.
For further information, please contact:
Jörg Polzer
Infront Sports & Media AG
www.infrontsports.com
Sian Rowland
European Handball Federation
Corporate Communications Manager
1
www.eurohandball.com