Shaping handball’s future by telling stories and using technology

Last summer, the idea to revive the European Handball Talks came to life on a roof terrace at Vienna, when David Szlezak (Managing Director of EHF Marketing GmbH) and Philipp Klotz (Transform Sports) met.

Now, three years after the last business summit, the event has its comeback in the Cologne Flora, with 200 guests from in- and outside the world of handball attending.

“We have a wide and open field of subjects on the agenda, such as technologies, fan engagement, sponsorships, marketing and the approach to the young generation. And we offer highly interesting lecturers and the great opportunity for all participants to network,” Szlezak says.

Together with Klotz, former organiser of the SPOBIS sports marketing congresses, EHF Marketing started their preparations seven, eight months ago. In 2022, the successful EHF Business Brunch had been a kind of little throw-off, now the big event is back – and for the first time over two days.

“The centre piece of the EHF FINAL 4 is still handball on the playing court, the entertainment is well-known and a core point. Now, besides activating our partners, the European Handball Talks is another occasion to meet and exchange ideas and meet new people to show the beauty of handball and the handball business,” Szlezak explains.

“The EHF FINAL4 is an extremely attractive sport event for increasing business opportunities for handball and having a showcase for all sports businesses,” adds Klotz. “The quality of the sports and the quality of the European Handball Talks are on an extremely high level.”

Mainly, it is important for the organisers to have the view of people from outside the handball world on their business to generate new ideas and networks to leverage the club competitions.

“EHF and EHF Marketing have a plan for the future, and to shape this future according to the master plan, new ideas are a must-have in the development. We want to inspire all stakeholders inside and outside handball and present handball to a new target group and we create fruitful discussions on controversial subjects as well as giving impulses and impact,” Klotz says.

The high number of participants underlines the relevance and the interest in the European Handball Talks and its topics to shape the future. Both Szlezak and Klotz are excited about the key note of Norwegian business philosopher Anders Indset, who lives in Germany and was a semi-professional handball player in the second German division for TV Gelnhausen – for one season even as an opponent of Szlezak.

“We must re-think economy – capitalism is not the problem, but the development of capitalism,” Indset says. “We need a humane capitalism, make a better, a social capitalism to save humanity.” Including handball in his thoughts, he points out that “the future is not about winning or losing of the match Kolstad vs PSG, but the future of professional sport like handball is what you create in future.”

Like other lecturers, the philosopher underlines the importance of storytelling to engage fans: “Write stories for tomorrow if you want to change something and create better products, re-think and build the stories of tomorrow.”

Finally, Indset names six takeaways for a successful future, personally for life and for sports business: Use your analytic skills, train your self-trust and ownership, use your voice to activate and inspire people, use the power of the team, get better by voluntary work, and appreciate success.

“If you stop playing, you risk growing up. Be positive and optimistic for a better future and be micro-ambitious every day,” Indset says.

The second part of the first day has focused on technologies like Metaverse, NFTs and Web 3.0. In a discussion with Philipp Ostsieker (Transform Sports), the experts Motasem El Bawab (CEO NeXt Sports), Thomas Euler (founder and CEO Liquidteam), and Damian Browarnik (Managing Director Infront Lab) talk about chances and challenges of future technologies.

“We have to use the technology to catch new audience. We support federations to understand their audience, our job is driven by content, communities and data – and we built solutions to make data more accessible,” Motasem El Bawab says.

Thomas Euler explains the way his company creates content and community management systems for sponsorship activating: “We connect teams and athletes to their community by platforms, for example by NFT tokens with premium content. It is our aim to shift Netflix to sports – by interactions how data creates better experiences.”

Damian Browarnik presents the way how Infront have been pioneers for the usage of artificial intelligence to create short highlight clips as content for EHF and their clubs and national federations.

“We have built trust and have connected to the fans with technology,” he says. “You have to understand what the fans need and you need to create original stories properly. To create more content is great, but you need to tell a story.”

The new platform for “all team sports except football” in Germany is DYN media, a new player on the market. DYN CEO Andreas Heyden presents the goals and efforts of the company, which will be the official EHF media partner for club competitions in Germany in the next season, besides they broadcast German men’s and women’s Bundesliga, the German cup – and in total eight different German leagues and five European competitions from different sports on their new online platform.

“DYN media serves underserved communities, as 70 million Germans love sports besides football. It is our mission to increase awareness for other sports by implementing a platform which accommodates those fans of handball, basketball, volleyball, hockey or table tennis,” Heyden explains.

DYN wants to become the fans’ first platform for handball, mainly by live experience, but also with a huge reach beyond TV and non-match-days. The concept includes the spread of content to the clubs, media partners and by social media.

“We are building a product around handball which founds on reach, rank, revenue as the three pillars,” Heyden says.

The clubs need to invest in infrastructure and staff but get paid back with a lot of content, which can also be used to increase the sponsor visibility and therefore the sponsoring income; 10 percent of the DYN revenue will be transferred back to the league for investments in youth development.

“It is important for the league to tell their kind of story from the match day and celebrate the sports in the league way. Having access to moving images is something new, for leagues and to create a closer engagement to the fans and the sponsors,” Heyden says.

Both organisers – David Szlezak and Philipp Klotz – are highly impressed with the first day of the European Handball Talks.

“It was really exciting and it will be more exciting tomorrow. We learnt how to inspire people and partners, and the experts inspired us,” says Szlezak, while Klotz is highly looking forward to tomorrow’s top speaker: Peter Hutton, one of the world’s greatest experts in sports media, former CEO of Eurosport, and today sport consultant for Meta.

photos © Jure Erzen / kolektiff