DHB set for IHF talks over Handball Worlds rights

The German Handball Association (DHB) has said it will meet with the International Handball Federation in mid-March in a bid to secure free-to-air coverage in the country of the 2017 Men’s World Championship.

The 2017 World Championship will take place in France from January 11-29. The DHB is seeking to avoid a repeat of the situation that arose during the most recent edition of the IHF showpiece. The 2015 Men’s World Championship took place in Qatar, with public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF only securing rights for extracts of coverage from the tournament.

Under the deal with beIN Media Group, the tournament’s global rights distribution partner, clips of games were shown in news and sports programmes. ARD and ZDF pulled out of talks to acquire live rights for the tournament before pay-television broadcaster Sky Deutschland struck a deal for live coverage before the start of the event.

The DHB has said it will take the opportunity of handball matches scheduled to be played in Germany on March 11 and 13 to meet with IHF president Hassan Moustafa. “This is one of the core issues on the fringes of the weekend,” DHB president Andreas Michelmann told German news agency SID.

Germany’s were surprise winners of the 2016 European Championship and the DHB is keen to capitalise on the rise in interest. “There is now a handball euphoria, the development goes steeply upwards,” Michelmann added.