“It is clear that handball is a family sport” – Croatia/Denmark/Norway 2025 Closing Media Conference

The closing media conference of the 2025 IHF Men’s World Championship took place between the bronze and gold medal matches at the Unity Arena in Oslo, Norway on Sunday (2 February) in front of the world’s media.

IHF President Dr Hassan Moustafa introduced the conference which also saw Tomislav Grahovac – President of the Croatian Handball Federation, Jan Kampman – President of the Danish Handball Federation, Kåre Geir Lio – President of the Norwegian Handball Federation alongside chairs of three IHF commissions and a representative from Official Media and Marketing Partner of the IHF, SPORTFIVE, in attendance.

Dr Hassan Moustafa – IHF President

“I would like to thank all the three Organising Committees for doing an incredible job. This has been an amazing edition of the IHF Men’s World Championship, the best ever. We have seen amazing handball being played and the spectators have been enjoying themselves in great arenas.”
Per Bertelsen, Chairman – IHF Commission of Organising and Competitions (COC):

“I would like to thank all three countries’ organising committees for their excellent co-operation and the many volunteers who have made a fantastic job. Getting everything together with three countries involved and to make a championship schedule that makes everyone happy is quite a challenge, but good solutions between the organisers were found and thank-you for that.

“A few years ago, the IHF stopped playing two days in a row in our senior competitions, so there’s now a rest day between matchdays and this is clearly benefitting the players in the competition. This, complete with the fact that we introduced a rule where there should be no more than four-and-a-half hours between checking out of one hotel and checking-in to another hotel, has been clearly a benefit for the players again. Before, teams would use the rest days as travel days the whole day but those days are over.

“Despite this, we still have to listen to the fact that ‘…one team has one more day off or more hours off than other teams…’ but this is not the truth. These extra days have been spent travelling from location to the next meaning that it is a travel day. Thank-you to everyone who has worked with the schedule.

“We have now played over 100 matches and I am so happy to see a minimum of normal disciplinary cases and from my information, the teams have been very happy. It has not gone un-noted that there have been a few security cases, something that should have not happened, has happened.

“For the IHF, it is clear that handball is a family sport where Dad, Mum and the kids can come together and enjoy our fantastic sport without any risk. We will continue to focus on this.”

Dietrich Späte, Chairman – IHF Commission of Coaching and Methods (CCM):

“From a coaches’ perspective, for the development of our game. In terms of the criteria for quality in the game, attack efficiency is more or less the same result as two years ago, in 57.8%. Denmark, at 65%, have an unbelievable attack efficiency.

“We have a new all-time record for the number of goals at 65. This doesn’t mean that only the attack is important. Now, a lot of teams have a focus on defence, they have this active, flexible defence going from one defence, 6-0, and after two seconds you are thinking it is 3-3 defence and then after two seconds they are back. Denmark was also a leader in this, but now a lot of teams are using. In the future we are hoping in the future we have a better balance between attack and defence.

“Every fast goal or attack is scored from a break, this is the modern handball today: very prepared situations, pivot movements and open spaces and then really dynamic actions. This is a clear trend – you see the best team and outstanding players do this.

“For teams from outside of Europe, for sure it is a success for Egypt and Brazil to be in the best eight, a good signal but at the same time we must really do more on the development, especially in Asia and Africa to bring them in a better position. For this, we have clear concepts, the implementation of the IHF License structure, in the last two years we have made 1,500 licenses in Africa. We are really coming forward, the same will now happen in Asia and also the focus to create structures for better talent systems, to bring them up.”

Per Morten Sødal, Chairman – IHF Playing Rules and Referees Commission (PRC):

“In general, we are satisfied. We have been more and more satisfied throughout the championships. However, we have seen matches and single situations which are not up to the standard we expect. It has maybe been, for the public, controversial situations about controversial matches if we compare to two years ago, but I cannot say the referee performance has been on a lower level than at Poland/Sweden 2023.

“Dietrich and I worked very, very close together in creating the guidelines for the referees which are always transmitted to the teams some weeks before the championship. This is also what we present in our mini-course [to officials] when we are together for two days before the championship starts.

“We see that the trend is that we have more one-against-one…before, we had big situations, divided into three – the pushes in the air, the high-speed violations (counter-attack, breakthrough or at the wing) and we had the violations towards the face. The latter has clearly gone up and the other ones have clearly gone down and that’s also because the development of the game that there is more one-on-one.

“We need to work every day on seeing if we can find better criteria for how to judge whether it’s a no-punishment situation, two-minute situation or red card.

“We are using VR not VAR, which means that there is not someone else somewhere else telling the referee ‘now you have to go and look at the video’. This is for the referees and sometimes the delegates to decide themselves [at the game]. Our average per match is a bit less then 0.9 checks per match, so still under one per match, and the average time is between 52-53 seconds – this is the time from the time they are showing the VR signal to the time that they make the decision.

“This tournament we had two teams from outside of Europe in the quarter-finals, but, unfortunately, we are not on these numbers when it comes to referees, yet. We have had referees from other countries outside of Europe who have done solidly in this championship, but for them to take the next step we are planning some projects asking the bigger federations in Europe to host referees from outside of Europe for a period of time so they can get more big game and high-level experience.”

Robert Müller von Vultejus, Chief Growth Officer at SPORTFIVE:

“It’s no surprise that in the participating countries the ratings have been strong. Croatia, with more than 65-70% market share which will be certainly be topped with the final this afternoon. Ratings in Denmark reached more than 80% market share, Sweden and Norway the same, very strong.

“In Germany we had a very interesting experience, particularly before the Germany vs Italy game, the market share, overall, was 27% but in the younger age group it was 5% higher. Which means that in contrary to some people’s perception that the handball audience is becoming older, this is a great testament that it is exactly a reverse. Young people are watching and following the championship.

“For us it’s important that some countries who are not able to afford for the license fees are able to access the games.

“SPORTFIVE were also responsible for the commercial programme with 12 global sponsors from all sectors, which is the strongest support we’ve had. Two years ago, we had six, so there’s a development, appetite and interest from global companies to be part of such a global event.”

Kåre Geir Lio – President of the Norwegian Handball Federation:

“I am very happy to say that the co-operation between all the federations has been excellent across all the years and months in preparing for this championship and I am so proud to be part of it.

“We are so proud to prepare the arena, which is a build-up to a permanent arena in this place, hopefully in 2028. Today, the number of spectators are the highest we’ve ever had in handball in Norway in history. This describes the development of handball and we can see we are in the right way.”

Throughout the media conference, questions were welcomed from the world’s media in attendance.