The past few months have sure resulted in a lot of handball buzz in the U.S.  Here’s a rundown of the events that have given handball more attention than normal:

• December:  NBC broadcast the 2019 Women’s World Championships.
• January:  The 2020 Men’s European Championships were broadcast on beIN Sports and ESPN showed two handball related plays of the day on SportsCenter.
• January 28:  Jay Cutler sets the handball world on fire with his comments about winning a gold medal on the popular Pardon My Take Podcast.
• February/March:  Cutlergate results in a slow burn of Twitter spats and handball discussion on other shows like ESPN’s Highly Questionable.  Pardon My Take even devotes an entire segment to discuss handball with former pro, Xavier O’Callaghan.
• April 13-19:  The NBC Olympic Channel is coaxed by USA Team Handball to essentially turn itself into the handball channel with around 12-16 hours daily of 2019 Men’s and Women’s World Championship match broadcasts.

Quantifying the Buzz

So, anecdotally, there’s little doubt that handball has been granted some extra attention. It can be challenging, however, to quantify the buzz. To get a handle as to what is actually happening in terms of handball interest.

Social media engagement and reach can be tracked. I periodically track followers and likes for the major platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and, no surprise, numbers are up, but not a whole lot more than they would be assuming normal growth platforms. Here’s a simple tabulation of growth since 29 November with the USA Team Handball and Team Handball News social media platforms:

Keep in mind that percentage growth is generally easier when you start. Which explains why the percentage growth for Team Handball News on Instagram looks great when in reality it’s pretty paltry.

Overall, there’s been some decent growth, particularly with Twitter, but it’s hard to guage how much of that can be attributed to growth that would have occurred anyway. And, further, how much of this growth is simply a result of existing handball fans jumping on board? In particular, if your desire is to grow the game in the U.S., it’s kind of hollow to add social media followers from other parts of the world.

Google Trends Data

The best tool I’ve found for tracking interest is Google Trends. Google Trends allows users to see the relative popularity of specific search topics by region for a specified time period. It’s not perfect and it has it’s limitations, but it does provide a pretty good snapshot. After all, how many Americans can remember when and where they typed in “handball” or “team handball” into Google for the first time? It’s probably close to 100% and most folks can remember exactly what triggered their curiosity.

With that in mind here’s some analysis of “handball” searches on Google Trends.

Here’s a look at what’s happened since last December.

• #1 Spike: Sunday, 26 January when the Men’s European Championship finals took place.
• #2 Spike: This past Sunday when the NBC Olympic Channel broadcast wall to wall coverage of the semifinals and medal matches for both the Men’s and Women’s 2019 World Championships.
• #3 Spike: 18 December which coincides with the rebroadcast of the Women’s WC final 3 days after it was completed on the NBC Sports Network Channel.
• Other Spikes: Rounding out the five month period are a number of different spikes which are a bit harder to correlate.

Key Takeaways

• Men’s handball trumps Women’s handball. Despite being on a network (beIN Sports) seen in fewer home it triggered far more searches.
• Better TV Networks mean more searches. A late night rebroadcast on the NBC Sports Network trumps both the NBC Olympic Channel and beIN Sports. An existing handball fan always figures out a way to watch the big match. Not so with a newbie. The NBC Sports Network is seen in over twice as many homes as the Olympic Channel and 4 times as many homes as beIN Sports.
• The Jay Cutler/Pardon My Take Brouhaha did result in a plus up. Those spikes in February/March would not be there otherwise. But those plus ups still aren’t quite as good as TV broadcasts.

For reference, here’s what happened in the entire world during the same time period. Again, the difference been Men’s and Women’s handball is very pronounced. There are also some small spikes in February and March. Perhaps that’s a knock on effect from the Handball World rising up in anger with Jay Cutler, but it could also be interest generated by the Champions League and other competitions.

Here’s an overview of Google searches for the past 5 years in the U.S..

Takeaways

• The impact of the Olympics in terms of the interest it generates is unmatched. Really, it’s hard to understate its impact in the U.S.
• The Men’s WC or EC in January of every year is the only other event that regularly registers. In relative terms to the Olympics, however, it pales in comparison.
• Moving the WC to the NBC Olympic Channel has helped. The best WC spike occurred in Jan 2019. Not coincidentally, the Olympic Channel is seen in twice as many homes as beIN Sports.
• Notable soccer handballs also spike… even in the U.S. This demonstrates the challenge handball has in America.
• The recent NBC Olympic Channel experiment has a nice little spike. It clearly resulted in some more searches and discovery of handball. It would be awesome if that spike was bigger, but I’ll take it. For sure, it’s better than a flat line.
• The Jay Cutler controversy doesn’t really register. This is not to say it still wasn’t nice to have that engagement, just that it didn’t do as much as we might think it did.

Here’s what the last 5 years look like for the world.

Key Takeaways

• The Olympics just doesn’t mean as much to the rest of the world. At the Olympics, handball is just another sport and has to fight for interest. Whereas as the annual big tourney in January every year handball takes center stage.
• Again, the relative interest between Men’s and Women’s handball is very clear. The little spike (Dec) followed by the big spike (Jan) happens like clockwork.

Overall Conclusions

The way we consume and talk about sports is evolving and changing. The cool Instagram clip, the banter on Twitter, cool TikTok videos… That’s how a lot of sports are consumed today. I’ve got two teenage daughters… they’re not big sports fans, but I’ve seen it first hand how big a role social media is playing in their lives.

However, TV is still the king of sports consumption. Whether via traditional networks or streaming outlets, true fans are gained from watching a match. This is not to say social media isn’t important… It is. But, in most cases it’s a reflection of what happens after someone sees handball and discovers it. Not the other way around.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti: “My dream is not so much just to bring the Olympics here, but is to bring youth sports for free to every zip code.” (Did Mayor Garcetti just set in motion the transformation of handball as we know it in the USA?)

Several recent news reports are signaling that the International Olympic Committee will likely be awarding host city rights to both the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics.  Initially, reporting indicated that it was a tossup as to which city, Paris or Los Angeles, would host first in 2024 with both cities insisting that they go first.  Earlier this week, however, the Wall Street Journal indicated that the IOC was leaning towards Paris in 2024 and L.A. in 2028.  And, just yesterday LA Mayor Eric Garcetti confirmed that the IOC had asked both Paris and LA what it would take to entice either city to consider delaying Olympic hosting to 2028.  Mayor Garcetti’s response:  Funding now from the IOC to develop youth sports in Los Angeles.

Why I prefer a 2028 L.A. Olympics

While I’m generally inclined to take a sooner than later approach to most things here’s why (from a parochial handball viewpoint) waiting 11 years to host an Olympics is greatly preferable:

• 7 years isn’t enough time to build competitive national teams. If you’ve read a few of my commentaries and analysis this should be painfully obvious.  The current talent pool of available players in this country is ridiculously thin and our grass roots programs are too small to create a talent pool of world class athletes in 7 years.
• A 2024 Olympics will force spending towards the top of the pyramid. Because the U.S. can’t possibly build a competitive national team through its current talent pool and grass roots in time for the 2024 Olympics an inordinate amount of resources will be spent at the top of the pyramid.  In other words an aggressive campaign will be launched to identify, recruit and train talented cross over athletes in the 22-25 age range.  As, I’ve written ad nauseam this is an outdated, short sighted strategy that is currently working very poorly for USA Team Handball.  A guaranteed Olympics, though, should improve recruiting and change “very poorly” to either “poorly” or “passable.”  The U.S. won’t win any medals, but it’s possible that teams that won’t embarrass too greatly could be built.
• 11 years provides more time to work grass roots and potentially transform the sport in this country. Eleven years might be just enough time to implement a targeted plan to develop a talent pool, fan base and set the sport on a trajectory of further growth.  Of course, more time will be needed for a soccer or lacrosse expansion across the U.S., but 11 years could set things in motion.
• The stars may be aligning to push USA Team Handball in the right direction. With near term Olympic qualification unlikely and 2028 qualification guaranteed it becomes even more logical to focus on grass roots efforts that will support efforts to build a quality 2028 team.  Herculean efforts to qualify near term simply won’t make sense.  Further, with the LA Mayor calling on the IOC to provide funding for youth sports in exchange for delaying to 2028 grass roots efforts just got further impetus.

The Outline of an 11 Year Plan

It’s early yet, but I can already see the outline of an 11 year plan to transform the sport in L.A. and eventually the rest of the country.  Here are some elements that might make up such a plan.  (And, if this looks familiar that’s because I’ve outlined similar possibilities before:  The Iceland Strategy)

• USA Team Handball aggressively moves on Mayor Garcetti’s youth sports dream and a plan to develop youth handball in the Los Angeles area is adopted. It won’t be idle talk to talk up the possibility of LA’s youth eventually making an Olympic handball team for an LA Olympics.
• IOC support is used as leverage to secure additional funding from the USOC, Olympic sponsors, the IHF and other handball entities
• Youth leagues are re-established with the Boys & Girls Club of Southern California
• The LA Unified School District agrees to sanction team handball as an official sport
• Middle School and High School leagues are funded and established
• A Southern California college league is funded and established
• Partial scholarships are awarded to encourage high school athletes to continue playing handball
• Top players from around the U.S. move to the L.A. area to further their development as players
• A regional training facility is established in Southern California. Top players from each age group receive additional training to supplement their club/school practices.
• Top players are given assistance in the placement of clubs in Europe (The first batch of players arrive around 2022)
• The U.S. Men and Women close the gap with Argentina and Brazil such that they start qualifying for the WC, but fall sort of Olympic Qual for 2024
• A handful of top players advance toward the upper professional ranks
• The U.S. fields rosters at the 2028 Olympics with roughly half their athletes as full time professionals

And, I haven’t even included what might be done regarding beach handball…

Yes, this is an ambitious strawman plan for eleven years time. Yes, it can’t be done without substantial funding.  But, I don’t think it’s a pipe dream because thanks to Mayor Garcetti’s dream it just might be doable.