Swedish handball takes sport streaming to the next level

Robert Wedberg (SHF) & Tobias Thalbäck (Solidsport)

Over 1500 activated handball teams and club channels, streaming more than 7000 handball games during last season and generating over 300 000€ in arevenue back to those clubs and teams. That is the latest result of the successful cooperation between Solidsport and the Swedish Handball Association.
– It’s an amazing result and hard to understand, to be honest, considering how few games that have been played in the past year due to the ongoing pandemic, says Roberg Wedberg, Secretary of General of the Swedish Handball Association.
 
Since 2018, Solidsport has been the home of live handball in Sweden thanks to a cooperation with the Swedish Handball Association. A successful partnership that in August 2020 led to both parties agreeing on an extension, with the ambition to take everything to the next level.

It really shows the enormous interest in following handball in so many ways and at all levels.

With a new two year partnership deal in place, a new chapter was starting with highly set expectations from both sides before the 2020/21 season. A lot of new features were then released, including a full integration with the swedish handball database.

What no one expected was a season that wouldn’t be like any other. Covid-19 and the pandemic had already swept quickly over Europe and gave the toughest possible circumstances for all sports on all levels, and everyone involved. Forcing all youth tournaments to cancel at the same time as all grassroot sports were shut down for a longer period of time.

But despite challenging times, over 7000 handball games were streamed on Solidsport, generating new record numbers.

- It really shows the enormous interest in following handball in so many ways and at all levels. This investment has not only been modern and offensive, this result also shows that this is something that our audience really demands. We look forward to continuing to develop this and it will be very exciting to see what we can achieve together with Solidsport in the future when we, hopefully, once again will be able to play handball at all levels again. says Robert Wedberg, Secretary of General of the Swedish Handball Association.

– Swedish handball has once again proven to be a pioneer of sport streaming on all levels and has taken another big step into the future. Thanks to great work and fantastic engagement from everyone involved, the Swedish handball family has doubled their revenue on sport broadcasting at the same time as parents, supporters and relatives have been given the possibility to follow their teams live from home during times when it has been needed the most, says Thalbäck.