Could this Spanish language sports channel be the new American home for the German Bundesliga?
The German Handball Bundesliga (HBL) 2012-13 season is set to begin this Friday night with Grosswallstadt hosting Melsungen. Unfortunately, the My Sports Germany channel did not the renew the rights for the HBL, so American viewers planning to get their handball fixing watching the world’s best professional league in their living room are probably out of luck. Or are they?
According to some email correspondence I received from The Sportmans Media Group (the TV rights distributor for the HBL) the Univision Deportes Network (UDN) now has the rights to broadcast the HBL in the U.S. via their relationship with Televisa Deportes Network (TDN). As I understand it, TDN is only available in Mexico, while UDN is available in the U.S. And UDN can and does broadcast a lot of TDN content. Mostly soccer from what I can tell.
I would like to know whether the UDN will (or could be convinced to) broadcast the HBL this season. (Heck, even if they show one match a week at 2:00 A.M, I’ll be happy.) Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find an email contact on the UDN website and some shout outs on Twitter and Facebook have been unanswered. Not too surprising as they were in English except for the word Balonmano (Handball in Spanish).
So my plea out there to any of our Spanish readers with a little bit of patience and persistence. If you can track down the right point of contact at Univision to discuss the possibility of balonmano being broadcasts on their network it would be very greatly appreciated. And if Univision agrees to advertise with Team Handball News, we will compensate you for your efforts.
If you have some good leads please send me an email at john.ryan@teamhandballnews.com