ehf_25yers_book_webversion

EURO in Slovenia would not be break any records
in terms of tickets sold. For this, the capacities
of Hala Tivoli in Ljubljana and the other
arenas at Koper, Celja and Velenje were just not
big enough. But the ECh was again well organised
and boasted a great atmosphere. Some 88
percent of tickets were sold, and the organisation
committee directed by Zoran Jankovic was
showered with praise from all sides. With welltrained
security guards at hand, the organisers
retained tight control of the politically charged
encounters between the nations of ex-Yugoslavia,
which had been classified as high-risk matches.
“The organisers have invested a lot of time
and money,” lauded Helmut Höritsch, the EHF’s
Senior Development Manager.
On the other hand, the EHF had to deal with
criticism of the playing format used in Slovenia
as it emerged that the rule change resulting
in the “fast middle” had made the game much
faster and hence made even more demands on
the players’ physical strength. In view of this development,
the EHF had already added one additional
rest day compared with the 2002 ECh.
“The players are of course exposed to enormous
levels of stresses and strains,” said Höritsch.
“The ECh, however, is what it is: a top product.”
In due course, the EHF reacted to the new conditions
by significantly extending the tournament
in order to provide more time for regeneration.
While, initially, the tournament had been played
over ten or eleven days, the 2016 ECh in Poland
lasted 17 days – a concession to safeguard the
professional players‘ physical health.
Where media coverage was concerned, the
2004 event in Slovenia as well as later tournaments
continued the trend of a steadily increasing
viewership. In 2004, the EHF EURO matches
attracted about 709 million viewers in a total of
190 countries. Two years later, this figure rose to
760 million spectators. The 2010 competition
held in Austria was the first to hit the milestone
of a television audience of one billion. In 2012,
in Serbia, the cumulative number of spectators
almost reached 1.5 billion. The development
in the social media was likewise breath-taking:
during the EHF EURO 2010 in Austria, the
ehf-euro.com internet platform was accessed
by a new record of about ten million users. Almost
one million fans watched videos on the
EHF‘s YouTube channel. These figures reflect the
great appeal that the EHF EURO had attained by
that date as the “most challenging tournament in
global handball”. At the same time, the number
of TV stations and journalist accreditations kept
rising. 800 journalists were accredited in Switzerland,
in Austria even around 1200.
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