The German national handball team captivated television viewers with their “Iceland crime thriller”. However, it narrowly lost out against a “real” crime thriller.
Next crime thriller, next TV success. The German handball players once again ensured a high audience rating at the home European Championships. The narrow victory at the start of the main round against Iceland (26:24) was watched by 7.84 million people on ZDF on Thursday evening. The market share was 28 percent.
However, they were just a hair behind the crime thriller “Nord bei Nordwest”, which was shown on ARD at the same time. An average of 8.044 million viewers watched it, which meant a market share of 28.3 percent.
The preliminary handball reporting from 8:15 p.m. was watched by 5.94 million viewers (23.8 percent market share) in the second.
The next top odds await on Saturday
In the preliminary round, the DHB selection had already given the TV channels ARD and ZDF strong ratings and market shares of at least 24 percent. The games against Switzerland, North Macedonia and France were each seen by more than seven million people.
The prospects of a high audience rating are once again good for the upcoming game. National coach Alfred Gislason’s team will compete against neighbors and surprise team Austria at “Prime Time” on Saturday evening at 8:30 p.m. Then ARD and the streaming service Dyn broadcast, which then have to assert themselves against, among other things, a ZDF crime drama (“A Strong Team”) and the jungle camp on RTL.
Further opponents for the German team are Hungary (Monday) and Croatia (Wednesday/both 8.30 p.m.). Only if the DHB selection wins all games in the main round does it have a realistic chance of reaching the semi-finals.