The third coup was successful: On Sunday evening, the women’s handball team from SG BBM Bietigheim was able to raise the women’s DHB Cup again after the clear 39:25 victory over HSG Bensheim Auerbach. And thus continue to write your own success story.
But the general situation in women’s handball gives little reason to celebrate, because financially it is precarious for many clubs. Several clubs have had to cancel their teams in the 2nd and 3rd Bundesliga handball leagues in recent weeks due to financial difficulties. There is a lack of sponsors – and therefore money.
Difficult circumstances for sponsor search
This was also underlined by the Bietigheimer managing director Lena Backhaus in the Deutschlandfunk interview: “Basically, it is not the best situation at the moment to get new sponsors or to keep the existing ones.” Corona pandemic, energy crisis, Ukraine war caused a difficult economic situation for many companies.
Backhaus, who took over the office in Bietigheim in September 2021, rates German women’s handball as fundamentally attractive for potential sponsors. She emphasized the low entry costs and appealed to companies in the Dlf to trust the increasing visibility of women’s handball and not to look at past values from times when the range was even more sobering.
Backhaus: “The be-all and end-all are the national teams”
Backhaus named the national teams in connection with major tournaments as an important driving force for improving the financial situation. In 2025 the Women’s Handball World Championship will be held in Germany. The Bietigheim managing director sees an opportunity: “The national teams are the be-all and end-all to advance the league. If one or the other public broadcaster implements a broadcast, the sport is easy to grasp.”
The league should also be further professionalized far from it. There is a basic contract with the German Handball Federation (DHB). However, it is clear that the clubs have to make advance payments for this further development. “We simply need companies,” Backhaus emphasized the importance of sponsors and added: “Because a large percentage of the income does not come from television money, as in football, for example.”
Backhaus also made the DHB and the league managers of the women’s handball Bundesliga (HBF) responsible for “investing even more” in women’s sports.