2024 Olympic Team Handball Competition Schedule, Results and Format

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There are several website options for getting your Olympic handball information. However, with the Olympics starting early in the morning in the U.S. you might want to strategize when and where you get your information, particularly if you want to watch matches that were played while you were sleeping without knowing the result ahead of time.

Olympic Handball Schedule and Results

Here are some websites where you can find the latest results and what matches are coming up along with some pros and cons for each website:

  • International Handball Federation (IHF):
    • Men’s Tournament
    • Women’s Tournament
    • The IHF website is the best place to get detailed information, but if you don’t want to know the scores of already played matches it’s not a good place to avoid spoilers
  • Paris 2024 Olympics Official Site: Link
    • Based on previous Olympics websites the official Paris 2024 website will just have basic top level information on the competition
  • NBC:
    • Handball Homepage
    • Schedule (Men and Women)
    • The NBC schedule page will be the go to destination for anyone living in the U.S. wanting to watch handball during the Olympics. Each match has a link to either the Live or On Demand video and it automatically adjusts the schedule to your time zone. Very importantly, the site also doesn’t have spoilers with the results of the matches.
  • Wikipedia:
    • Men’s Competition
    • Women’s Competition
    • I’m a huge fan of the Wikipedia pages for major handball competitions as most of the information I’m looking for is all in one place at an easy to navigate website without a lot of bells and whistles.

Competition Format

Both the Men’s and Women’s competition have the same relatively straightforward competition format.

  • GROUP PLAY: The 12 teams are divided into two groups of 6 and play a round robin
    • Matches during group play can end in a draw
    • The top 4 teams from each group advance to an 8 team knockout tourney
    • Rules for ranking and tiebreakers:
      1. Points (2 for a win; 1 for a draw)
      2. Head-to-head points
      3. Head-to-head goal difference
      4. Head-to-head goals scored
      5. All matches goal difference
      6. All matches goals scored
      7. Draw lots
  • KNOCKOUT TOURNEY
    • Matches during the knockout tourney cannot end in a draw
      • If the match is tied at the end of regulation two five minute periods of Extra Time are played
      • If the match is still tied after the first two periods of Extra Time another Extra Time with two more five minute periods is played
      • If the match is still tied after the 2nd Extra Time a penalty shoot out with similar rules to soccer is played until there is a winner.
    • Quarterfinal pairings
      • One half of the bracket will be (A1 vs B4) and (B2 vs A3)
      • The other half of the bracket will be (B1 vs A4) and (A2 vs B3)
    • The quarterfinal winners advance to the semifinals.
    • The semifinal winners play for gold and the semifinal losers play for bronze.

Notes:

  • Throughout Group Play and the Knockout Tournaments, the men and women will alternate playing days and rest days.
  • The women’s competiton actually starts on Thursday, 25 July, the day before the opening ceremonies. There is no competition on Friday, 26 July, the day of opening ceremeonies and then the Men start play on Saturday, 27 July.
  • Group play matches will be played at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles and then the rest of the competition starting with the quarterfinals will move to the Stade Pierre-Mauroy in Lille.