Strategic growth: European Handball Federation on growing its fan base on Twitch and TikTok By Heather McLean, Editor Friday, November 11, 2022 - 10:05
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Thomas Schoneich, director of media and communications at the EHF, comments on the overall strategy for growing EHF viewership in Europe from Ljubljana, Slovenia at the Women's EHF Euro 2022
The European Handball Federation (EHF) is forging ahead with its ambition to become the most attractive indoor team sport for fans old and new by 2030.
It was founded on 17 November 1991 and is the umbrella organisation for handball in Europe, with 50 member federations and two associated federations.
Overall, this comes together from a very, very global perspective to turn handball into the most attractive team sport in this decade, to climb up [with] 24/7, 365-day content provision to our partners
Headquartered in Vienna, Austria, the EHF's responsibilities include the organisation and management of the world's most high profile and competitive handball competitions, including the EHF Champions League and EHF Euro events.
Speaking from Ljubljana, Slovenia at the Women's EHF Euro 2022, being held in Slovenia, North Macedonia and Montenegro from 4 to 20 November, Thomas Schoneich, director of media and communications at the EHF, comments on the overall strategy for growing EHF viewership in Europe. He says it is based on three pillars working towards, the overarching strategic plan that we are following, and that is to turn handball into the most attractive indoor team sport in this decade .
Pillars of growth
Those pillars include the growth of the game and its funding, working with its partners Infront and DAZN to create a 365/24/7 approach to its content, and to focus on specific topics within the sport, with a focus right now on the women of handball in Europe.
Adds Schoneich: Then what we're trying to do in terms of growth is to grow on a horizontal level and try and reach new people, while at the same time satisfying our existing fan base. You obviously have a hardcore fan base that you also have to supply with content and that you also have to serve, and at the same time, you have to provide content to reach new audiences. In that respect, we work very extensively with the federations and the players, because they are the best ambassadors that we have to promote the sport.
We work quite extensively with broadcast partners, and supply them with content, continues Schoneich. We work with influencers to reach new bases, and that's the horizontal level. And on a vertical scale, you have to look in terms of the quality of the content that you provide. There's a lot of short-form content which we do, but there's also increasingly a focus on long-form, behind the scenes, in-depth content to have a better opportunity to tell the stories of the sport.
Overall, this comes together from a very, very global perspective to turn handball into the most attractive team sport in this decade, to climb up [with] 24/7, 365-day content provision to our partners.
The EHF is working hard to increase its social media presence and therefore a new, younger fan base
TikTok time
This goal of becoming the most attractive team sport of the decade is being carefully measured, states Schoneich, and it is going very well. He says: We have one KPI that we're following; it's a very hard number. We want to have 2.5 million followers on our social media channels by 2025.
Twitch is very, very hard. You have to fight for every follower, whereas sometimes on TikTok you think that they just come to you in comparison
In 2020, we started with about 1.1 million across our entire ecosystem, and by now we are actually close to 2.2 million already, as of 11 November. That's in particular due to the success we've had on TikTok. Our efforts on TikTok, and we were lucky enough to have a partnership with them in January 2022 for the previous European Championship, comes back to our strategy, because reaching new audiences also means being present where these people are and trying to supply them with content on platforms which they use. Over the past year, I'd say, if I go back to 8 November 2021 when we had 190,000 followers, our TikTok channel has grown by around 400,000, to now, as I speak now, 590,000 if I'm not mistaken. So more than 200% growth. So that's a very hard number.
Schoneich comments on the EHF's more recent focus on a younger generation of fans, and how it is working to balance that with its existing hardcore fan base. I think the key for the federation, and I think here we are all in the same boat so what I'm saying is not specific to the European Handball Federation is, yes we obviously all want to target the younger generation, the famous Gen Z; that's why we're on TikTok. A year and a half ago already we started our presence on Twitch, and we're actually quite heavily investing in Twitch at the moment here at the championship. But at the same time, you have to cater for your existing audience, because when it comes to ticket sales, the attendance when we come to live matches is a totally different age group to the ones that we are targeting on TikTok.
When it comes to a content strategy, that's how we try to approach it; it's one thing targeting the younger generation on TikTok and providing them with content, actively engaging with them via community management, but it's another thing and it's equally important to talk to your existing fan base, try to achieve new customers also in other generations. If we don't get these young people now then we may not get them in the future, but at the same time, we cannot just only focus on the TikTok generation of the world, and focus 98% of our efforts on pushing out 15 second
