Handball needs to “learn from the pirates” to explore new markets

In the first presentation, Martin Skigaard Skammelsen, Marketing Manager Aalborg Håndbold, explained the concept and the growth of his club in terms of VIP and fan experience.

Aalborg have currently sold 2,100 season tickets, with 1,200 more fans on their waiting list. The ticket sales are almost 100 per cent digital, even for the partner and season tickets. Having 497 sponsorship partners, those companies have special accounts to distribute the tickets to their guests.

“We deliver sold-out matches, great game day experience and sportive success – we return the value for their money to fans and partners,” Skammelsen said.

At top matches, up to 1,200 VIPs enjoy a six-course dinner, open bar, entertaining programme, entering the arena on a red carpet and of course top sports.

“Annually we survey our VIPs and regular, what they want and what we can improve, we are looking for new keys to unlock the potential,” Skammelsen said.

How can athletes, clubs, leagues, federations and sports reach the Generation Z? This was the subject in the following experts’ discussion of Alexander Walkenhorst (former beach volleyball professional and founder and managing director of Sportents), Benjamin Stoll (FIS director of digital & innovation), and Britta Sölter (athletia sports).

EHF is using Twitch as a streaming platform for their weekly The Spin show, and Walkenhorst’s company is one of the partners since the implementation. In Covid-19 times, he had the idea to create beach volley events, streamed on Twitch and later managed to bring the digital audience to the courts.

And Walkenhorst was one of the pioneers using social media channels to extend his short season of four months to a whole year by distributing his content on platforms like YouTube, Twitch and podcasts.

“Twitch is the best platform, look at all those streamers for the young generation. We are copying the same things since 20 years and try to reach the young generation, but they are completely different – in only some seconds they decide if the content is good or not, so we have to talk about entertainment media, not social media, this is the difference,” says Walkenhorst.

FIS broadcasted their youth world championships via YouTube to reach a younger generation of fans, and for Benjamin Stoll it is still an “exciting challenge how to engage a young generation – we have to learn the behaviour and patterns of the younger audiences. They have the shortest attention span ever, and there is so much competition outside – we have to be really quick. Twitch is a very important platform, but first many other platforms need to be optimized, we have to do our homework first. And we need to learn from the new generation how to create content and communities around our athletes.”

For Alexander Walkenhorst clubs and federations have to change their minds: “A young athlete wants to create his own content, but currently it needs to be connected with the clubs, the leagues the federations – this is the problem, we are missing opportunities – we need to enable the athletes to do their own story, not regulated by the clubs.”

A major part of the second day of the European Handball Talks was about sport marketing. Andreas Ullmann and Philipp Tappe from company ‘The sports people’ explained how their analysis and expertise bring brands and sports together.

“First, we try to understand the problems and to explore the perspective of fans, leagues, clubs, athletes and partners to find a common line, to find the values and core of the partnership,” said Tappe.

As an example, they analysed EHF club competitions by finding future topics such as society trends like gender equality, the CSR of EHF and sponsors, and the needs of the next generation of players and fans.

“The core of a partnership is the common perspective of all three sides and find joined targets,” said Ullmann.

Three experts from the sports marketings business took a deep dive in the current situation: Alenka Potocnik Anzic (Marketing Director Hisense Europe), Jan Lehmann (Founder Vispex, former CEO Mainz 05 football club), Karsten Petry (chief marketing & sales officer Deutsche Sporthilfe) discussed current developments with Philipp Klotz (Transform Sports).

Sport sponsorships play an important role for Hisense with their brands Gorenje and Hisense – and handball plays an integral role since years for Gorenje as Alenka Potocnik Anzic underlined: “EHF and EHF Marketing are the right partners to reach our European-wide target audience and in supporting our goals, all over Europe, the value for money is good in handball to explore new markets.”

Vispex on the other hand offers a platform for sport media agencies and brands to find the right media rights, which are currently on the market: “The brands want to have data about reach or users, we deliver, and they can choose from their criteria”, said Lehmann.

Potocnik Anzic fully agreed: “In 2017 when we started, we like sports because of passion and emotions, but the owners wanted to have numbers. We analyse our partnerships every year in terms of brand, media, sales, market share and hospitality for our partners, as pillars for our sponsorship decisions. Handball fulfils all our criteria, but the biggest challenge for the future is how to engage the younger generation, for all brands and all sports, we need to find a new way.”

Karsten Petri underlined the role of sportsmen and sportswomen: “The value of sports comes from the athletes, they have the power to change society, we give the money from the partners directly to the athletes.”

Finally, a huge sports media expert inspired and excited the audience: Peter Hutton, former CEO of Eurosport, former vice president of Fox sports, advisor for Meta, and now advisor for many sports leagues.

“Sport will get you through the door to the audience has always been the motto for media, mainly pay-TV companies – but times have changed, despite the value of sports media rights have a growth,” Hutton said, mentioning those changes: young audience does not like to watch live sport on TV, but offline sport videos on digital channels, using the second screen to have different activities parallel.”

In Hutton’s opinion leagues and sports should not rely on pay-TV income anymore, but should distribute their content free of charge to a wider audience – and even make usage of the so-called pirates who steal the content to create their own content.

“Don’t rely on the TV schedule, go on different platforms and the leagues re-take control of their competitions, tech companies want different things and never invest money in sport, despite sport is a brilliant content. They look at the data.” Hutton explained examples like Apple, Amazon or Meta and how they enter the sports market – for example with the approach to compare the reach of live sports compared to cat videos to decide whether they broadcast sports or not.

Hutton clearly addressed to leagues and rights holders to spread their content and to value their content in a different way to activate younger age groups: “Make people create their content by using your content to use the best moments for their stories. Let the fans play with your content, as the best social media content is not created by your social media teams, but by online pirates. And make use of your best ambassadors, the athletes.” In future, mixed reality will succeed on virtual reality, like people using VR headsets in stadiums to personalize the way to watch the game, using data, stats and betting tools.”

Finally, Hutton mentioned some ideas for sponsors, partners and media: “Make the fan feel part of the experience, have a direct relationship with the fan, build your own database, let the fan create by giving them content, use athletes and influencers, understand the business model of your partners, don’t kill the pirates, learn from the pirates.”

photos © Jure Erzen / kolektiff