Handball: Media: Handball fans win Men’s World Cup on German Free TV

Handball fans can obviously hope to be able to watch free-TV broadcasts again at the two upcoming World Men’s Championships in 2019 and 2021. According to Sport Bild, experts assume that the TV rights for the 2019 and 2021 tournaments will be awarded to the French marketer Lagardere.

The past two tournaments were broadcast on Pay-TV at Sky (2015) and Sky (2015). as an online stream on the homepage of the DHB sponsor DKB (2017). At that time, the Qatari rights owner beIN Sports refused to sell the rights to ARD and ZDF or any other free TV channel.

The reason for this is that these channels are freely available via satellite in European and African countries, where beIN Sports holds the pay-TV rights at the World Handball Championships. The hangovers therefore pushed for encryption, and ARD and ZDF rejected this with regard to their satellite customers.

If Lagardere were to be awarded the contract for obtaining the TV rights, ARD and ZDF could negotiate sublicenses with the French. The issue of encryption is off the table. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), to which the two German public broadcasters belong, has apparently not made a bid.

At the Women’s Handball World Championship from 1. till 17. BeIN Sports had already given in and accepted an unencrypted transmission via satellite in Germany on 12 December. beIN Sports will find a solution,”explained Mark Schober, Secretary General of the DHB, on Thursday.