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STRUCTURE<br />
“Lüthi guaranteed<br />
us a fixed<br />
sum. And he<br />
paid instalments<br />
to us even<br />
before the first<br />
EHF EURO had<br />
started. This<br />
laid the financial<br />
groundwork<br />
for operations,<br />
staff, and other<br />
activities”<br />
Berlin, Lisbon, Bratislava and Zurich had<br />
withdrawn their offers. After a brief preparatory<br />
phase, Secretary General Michael<br />
Wiederer, who had changed from Österreichischer<br />
Handball Bund to the EHF, and<br />
Pia Pedersen, his assistant, started operating<br />
in Vienna on 1 September 1992.<br />
“With just two desks and two telephones,”<br />
Wiederer recalls, smiling. The first official<br />
act was the attendance of the 1992 Women‘s<br />
Youth ECh in Hungary, which, according<br />
to Wiederer, was conducted “without<br />
any structures in place yet”.<br />
At the beginning, money was very tight.<br />
In November 1991, the 29 founding<br />
members had provided the EHF Office<br />
with about 14,000 Swiss francs. In the<br />
year that followed, large federations like<br />
DHB paid 4000 Swiss francs per year,<br />
smaller nations like Moldova 500 francs.<br />
As early as spring 1991, however, the<br />
EHF’s first Treasurer Güntzel – at that time<br />
“still without any mandate or federation”,<br />
as he said – initiated a promising contact<br />
with the Kreuzlingen-based sports rights<br />
marketing firm César W. Lüthi (CWL),<br />
which he had known since the 1986 WCh<br />
in Switzerland.<br />
Güntzel told the owner of the agency<br />
that the EHF was planning to organise European<br />
Championships every two years.<br />
Lüthi was interested. “Do drop in”, the<br />
marketer had asked him, Güntzel says.<br />
“The place where I live – St. Gallen – is actually<br />
not far from Kreuzlingen. “The EHF<br />
pioneers were, of course, also negotiating<br />
with other marketers of TV rights, among<br />
them the legendary Munich lawyer Axel<br />
Meyer-Wölden, who at that time represented<br />
Boris Becker. “If things go well, you<br />
will earn a lot. If they don’t, you won’t,”<br />
Meyer-Wölden explained.<br />
This prompted the handball functionaries<br />
to opt for CWL. The amount “was not<br />
exorbitant”, is as much as Güntzel is allowed<br />
to disclose. “But the special feature<br />
was this: Lüthi guaranteed us a fixed sum.<br />
And he paid instalments to us even before<br />
the first EHF EURO had started. This<br />
laid the financial groundwork for operations,<br />
staff, and other activities.” From<br />
these beginnings evolved a longstanding<br />
partnership characterised by deep mutual<br />
trust: as has been reported, the EHF and Infront<br />
(the successor of CWL) have entered<br />
into a partnership for marketing EHF EU-<br />
ROs up to the year 2020.<br />
In any case, the infrastructure available<br />
was extremely modest when the EHF administration<br />
started working at Gutheil-<br />
Schoder-Gasse 9 in Vienna in the year<br />
1992, in offices looking out on the UHK<br />
Wien club’s former home venue. “I think<br />
we will manage and we will be able to<br />
meet the challenges facing us,” – it was in<br />
this spirit that Secretary General Wiederer<br />
and his team started into this pioneering<br />
period with much optimism and drive.<br />
Rules of procedures issued by the EHF<br />
Committee already regulated key elements<br />
of the work. “The Executive Committee<br />
and I trust each other fully,” were<br />
the words used by Wiederer in praise of<br />
the strong relationship between honorary<br />
officers and professional staff in 1993.<br />
34
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