08.07.2015, 02:30
Hundreds of thousands tune in for Lloret 2015

The European Beach Handball Championships 2015 in Lloret de Mar enjoyed unprecedented media coverage on TV and online in Spain as well as across Europe

Hundreds of thousands tune in for Lloret 2015

The second stage of this year's Tour de France had just come to an end on Sunday, and the cyclists had passed the finish line in the Dutch city of Zélande, when it was time for Europe's best beach handball players to take to the court and enter the TV screens.

Spanish sports channel Teledeporte broadcast the semi-finals and finals with Spanish participation on Saturday and Sunday, and the coverage reached hundreds of thousands in Spain.

The women's bronze medal match at 18:00 CET between Spain and Italy was watched by 244,000 people (market share 2,3%), while 226,000 stayed (2,2 %) for the men's final between defending champions Croatia and Spain.

A peak had been reached already the day before when 318,000 (3,1%) people watched the women semi-final between Spain and Norway. The average market share for Teledeporte on these two days stood at 2,2%.

Seeing these number lead Spain's player Raquel Cano to the following conclusion: "Someone must definitely like it (beach handball)."

The men's final was furthermore broadcast by TV Arensport in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and FYR Macedonia.

In terms of peak viewership this more than doubled the figures that were reached last year at the European Championship 2013, when the best watched game was the women's final between Denmark and Hungary that had 107,000 people watching.

These numbers underline the media focus and interest for Lloret 2015 that also an increased number of journalists, i.e. from Germany, FYR Macedonia and Ukraine, as well as media professionals from the participating federations, i.e. from Croatia, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Italy, covering the event.

On top of this the EHF's Beach Handball Facebook page reached around 150,000 people in the week of the championship.

TEXT: EHF / ts
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