It’s always great to see team handball get a little publicity on TV and yesterday the sport got around 3 and a half minutes of analysis on ESPN’s Highly Questionable, a show with a question and answer format resulting in some irreverent takes on a variety of topics.

Team Handball got two questions: Video Link

The first handball question was, “Are you with Jay Cutler that he could win a gold in handball?” The clip then shows, the former NFL quarterback discussing handball on the Barstool Sports, Pardon My Take, Podcast. The episode is here (1:18:45 – 1:19:53), but ESPN rebroadcasts most of the handball discussion.

Co host, Domonique Foxworth, a former NFL cornerback, has the typical take we hear every fours during the Olympics, “I’m sorry if it’s disrespectful to handballers everywhere, but I’ve watched that game before… You know who plays handball. The people that couldn’t make it in soccer, couldn’t make it in football… Me, Jay Cutler and Lebro will go win a handball championship.”

While Sarah Spain, has a more accurate assessment, “I do feel like there are probably some sports where the very best of our athletes could excel if they spent the time and energy.”

The second question was “Do you guys want to see what the U.S. handball team currently looks like?” At which point they showed footage of a 2016 promotional video done by the residency program at Auburn. At which point Sarah reverses course and agrees that Dom and Jay Cutler would dominate.

Of course, the problem with that video is that is most definitely not our current team. The residency program has been shut down and most of the men’s national team now consists of dual citizens playing in Europe, some at a fairly high level. And, trust me, this U.S. Men’s team would make short work of some inexperienced wannabe handball athletes in their mid 30’s, no matter how good they are in other sports.

Past Commentaries on this Topic

Like clockwork every four years during the Olympics this topic comes up. In 2016, LeBron’s potential as a would be handball player was front in center.

Could LeBron James really become the best handball player in just 6 months?

• Part 1: Do I really have to explain how crazy that notion is? Link
• Part 2: Why it’s just not going to happen, but what about Lebon lite? Link

More recently the dismal showing of the U.S. Men’s Basketball team shows just how silly the notion is that the U.S. could win a gold medal in a sport with all newcomers: Link

Future USA Team Handball Plans Related to this Topic?

The old saying, “Any publicity is good publicity” certainly applies here. Even if it’s nonsense takes, it’s totally awesome for team handball to be a topic of discussion on Barstool Sports and ESPN.

What has me a bit worried, however, is that USA Team Handball’s CEO, Barry Siff, is brand new to the sport and seems to buy into these takes to a certain degree. In several interviews he’s talked about talent transfer and the possibility of turning water polo players into handball players. He’s already jumped on the possibility of getting Jay Cutler to an open tryout for our National Team.

Now, obviously Cutler at 36 is simply too old for such a transfer, but make no mistake he would have been a great handball player. According to his Wikipedia article, in addition to football, he was a first team Indiana All State basketball player and honorable mention All State shortstop in baseball. That’s a strong pedigree, but there’s virtually no way he would have given up an NFL career to choose handball.

And, this is where the discussion becomes, “Well, maybe we can’t get Jay Cutler or Lebron James, but what about Lebron Lite?” And, then you have a boat load of questions to take into consideration:

• How much “lighter” in raw talent?
• At what age can you get that athlete to switch?
• How long does it take to make that athlete a great handball player?
• How much is it going to cost you to transition that athlete?
• And, the biggest question of all… If you focus on such athletes what are the opportunity costs in time and resources diverted from growing traditional grass roots?

I take on some of these questions in Moneyball Handball series:

• Part 1: Broad Categories for Athlete Identification: Link
• Part 2: Pushing the Outside of the Recruiting Envelope: Link

Overall, I’m hopeful that these national team tryouts (now apparently planned for this summer in LA and NYC) are primarily marketing tools for publicity, but I could be wrong. Regardless, the publicity won’t hurt. I just hope it doesn’t become the primary focus and eat up too much of the budget.

This is part of an ongoing series: Link

Membership:  Arguably, the Most Important Metric for a National Governing Body (NGB)

A National Governing Body (NGB) in the sporting world serves many purposes, but serving its members is probably its most important function.  One just has to look at the USA Team Handball By-Laws and the 275 times that members or membership is mentioned to get a clear picture as to how important members are.

Aside from By-Law references and common sense, membership is also a major revenue source.  Or, ideally it should be.  For many NGBs it clearly is.  This table highlights the membership revenue for several team sport NGBs using data from their 2016 IRS Form 990s and Annual Reports 

As can be readily seen USA Team Handball revenue, as well as, total members is significantly smaller than most other team sport NGBs.  Orders of magnitude smaller.

Additionally, while membership has its own dedicated revenue line it also indirectly impacts every other line to a significant extent.  If an NGB wants to bring in more revenue for events and clinics then doing so will be greatly enhanced by a larger membership.  And, it goes without saying that activating sponsorships for a membership base that doesn’t crack a 1,000 can be a pretty tough sell.

But, if you increase membership revenue and the total numbers of members everything becomes a bit easier.  Convincing would be sponsors becomes easier.  Convincing a TV network to air handball matches becomes easier… which also makes selling sponsorship easier.

The Fuzzy Math Behind NGB Membership

The importance of a large membership base is therefore very clear.  Or, if it’s not large, it’s good to be showing some real growth from year to year.  Make no mistake: This is a reality not lost on NGBs.  Yes, amusingly, multiple sports have at different points in the recent past or present have laid claim to the title, “Fastest growing sport in the U.S.”  And, since data is sketchy and can be manipulated they all probably can make the claim without being called out.  Heck, depending on how growth is defined/calculated from time period to time period they all could be right.

If an NGB wants to increase membership there are steps that can be taken.  To a certain extent membership can be boosted by lowering the cost.  Or, it can be boosted by making a huge push via reduced cost youth memberships.  Or, memberships can be tied to directly to participation in high interest competitions.  Because of these potential step it’s important to look at membership revenue in addition to the total membership.  But, as I’ve learned recently even membership revenue can be manipulated to an extent by making membership revenue to the NGB a “pass through” revenue that is mostly distributed back to regional bodies. (or, in the case of USA Rugby, was supposed to have been distributed back to regional bodies.)

Tracking Membership and Officially Taking the Mantle of Fastest Growing Sport

So, what is USA Team Handball’s membership total?  I hate to say this, but I really don’t know.  I’m not even sure if USA Team Handball knows.  I have asked this question multiple times in the past and have never gotten a definitive straight answer.  Instead I’ve usually been given a deflected answer with maybe a low and high range value.  Over the years I’ve heard numbers as low as 300 and as high as 1,200.  I think there are a couple of reasons for this. 

Firstly, I don’t think USA Team Handball has ever had a decent system for tracking this number.  Either back in the old days when membership was handled by check or more recently with the Top Score management system that is now being replaced.  On top of that, the number of members changes depending on the time of the year. So, if you ask for the number early in the yearly cycle it’s going to be lower since a lot of people don’t sign up until… well, until they have to.  Old timers might well remember the long membership sign up line at the National Championships.  As in, you couldn’t play if you weren’t a member.  And, if USA Team Handball picked a bad location for nationals and fewer people showed up I bet the membership suffered that year.

Still despite these handicaps, it’s not rocket science.  There should be a yearly official membership number, but, believe it or not, I don’t recall ever seeing it written down in official documentation.  As someone who likes crunching and assessing data you can probably guess what I think about that.

Of course, that’s all in the past.  It’s a new day and we’ve got a new membership platform (Sport:80)  Whatever the membership number is we can bet that it’s being closely tracked now.  It’s surely a low number and while we could whine about it being such a low number, we can also look at it as a crazy good opportunity to show improvement.  Because with better revenue flows and the IHF grant to support college development, it’s hard to imagine not improving upon it significantly. And, when you’re starting with a small number percentage growth can be really impressive.  For instance, if our current membership is let’s say 800 and we were to simply add 400 members next year we would have a 50% growth rate.  A growth rate that would be nearly impossible for sports like Ultimate, Cricket, Rugby and Lacrosse to match. 

And, USA Team Handball shouldn’t just track the top level number, but track membership data by age, region and club.  And, then track that data from year to year.  To see where members are being gained, lost and retained. This data is “gold” and it can really show what’s working and not working in terms of development efforts.

I suppose I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.  That I’m eyeing some end goals in terms of membership and, in turn, the number of clubs in the U.S. But, then again it’s hard to set such goals if one doesn’t first fully understand what one has to begin with.

And, I’m getting a bit tired of the drudgery associated with capturing “What We Have”. Why, believe it or not, some folks have even accused me of not being forward thinking and stuck in the past. As if? Everybody knows it’s more fun to dream up solutions. And, far less fun to do the homework.

I’ve done a lot of homework. Not that I probably won’t backtrack some, but it’s time to start delving into the “What We Want” portion of this effort. 

Earlier this week the long awaited USA Team Handball – Verizon Sponsorship deal finally came to fruition.  Long awaited in that it was no secret that USA Team Handball CEO, Barry Siff and Verizon CEO, Hans Vestberg were friends.  And, that Vestberg is a big handball supporter, and the former President of the Swedish Handball Federation and the Swedish Olympic Committee.

As one might expect I was flooded with feedback regarding the deal.  I’ll give the glass half empty / glass half full perspectives and my own two cents.

Glass Half Empty:  Little Money and not Historic

Most of the negative feedback centers around the small dollar figure associated with the deal.  (An official dollar figure was not revealed, but multiple sources have indicated that it is somewhere between $100K – $200K.)  In terms of a total amount this is not historic… not even close.  In fact, the biggest sponsorship signing for USA Team Handball was for $1M with “The Weather Channel” from 1994-1996.  Factoring inflation that sponsorship deal would be worth around $1.7M in 2020 dollars or roughly 10 times the amount of the Verizon deal.  Of course, that deal was directly tied to the Atlanta Olympics, but even recent sponsorship deals related to the residency program at Auburn or with Grundfos in the 2009-10 time frame were of similar value. 

Compared to the amount of sponsorship dollars Verizon pays to the NFL ($500M/year) and the reality that there is no other USA company so conveniently headed by such a stronger backer of handball the reaction of the naysayers is: 

We waited for this?  Is this all you got?  This doesn’t even make a dent into the lack of revenue the organization currently has. A budget so paltry that our national team athletes have to pay for their own travel to represent their country in official competition.

Glass Half Full:  A Real Big Opportunity for More Deals and Better Promotion

While much of the feedback was negative there was also a lot of positive comments about getting such a “Name” sponsor on board.  And, make no mistake, Verizon is a really big name.  As Barry Siff told Sports Business Journal:

“Verizon’s a legitimizer for the sport of team handball.  It’s as simple as that”

Yes, putting Verizon on the front of U.S. jerseys is a really good thing.  And, there’s a solid chance that other businesses might follow suit, thinking “What’s good enough for Verizon, is good enough for us.”

Making me feel even better about the situation is the sales and marketing agency, Innovative Performance Group 360 that has been hired to help secure those new deals.  If one checks out their website you’ll see that they’ve done this before.  In particular, check out the testimonial and some of the work they’ve done for another U.S. Sports National Governing Body (NGB):  Link

Yes, no surprise here as the new USA Team Handball CEO also sits on the USA Triathlon Board.  Still, if one looks at some of their promotion work like this video it’s not hard to envision something similar or even better being done as handball is a tailored made spectator sport.

My Own Thoughts:  A Glass that Could Well be Filled, but How is that Money Going to be Spent?

Overall, I’m more in the glass half full category.  Sure, I would like for the deal to have been for more money, but I also know how hard it is to sell team handball in this country.  Getting companies and/or TV networks to even talk to you can be tough.  We don’t even have a real handball product to market in the U.S. yet. 

Now we’ve got somebody on board.  A company (Verizon) with immense resources.  And, a company (IPG 360) that knows how to sell and market.  Based in Santa Monica too… Where the LA Olympics will be in 8 years.  Plus, our once every four years Olympics TV boost is coming this summer.  Oh, and a new mega 10 year EHF Champions League TV contract with requirements to market in the U.S. also starts this fall.  Could handball broadcasts move to a major U.S. network?   Really, there is a big confluence of events coming that could well be capitalized upon and it seems the wheels may be in motion to actually do it. That’s all good.  It’s really good.  In fact, it could really be legitimately historic.  Epic even.

But… I then hear and read things about how some of that new money might be spent and I get a bit antsy.  There’s going to be an Open National Team Tryout in a few months?  Why that raises so many questions in terms of what is hoped to be accomplished and practicality that I don’t even know where to start. What would we do with great raw talent transfer athletes from say, water polo, if they show up?  Start another residency program?  Ship the newbies to some European club for a 3 year project? 

The Sports Business Journal article talks about a Pro League starting in 2023 with 10 franchises costing from $3-5M.  Hey, that sounds awesome… just not practical.  Who’s going to invest that kind of money? Where are you going to find the players?

Sigh… Such efforts can be done, but they won’t be cheap. They would empty our newly flush bank account very quickly and more importantly, they would drain resources away from the long hard slog that is true grass roots development. Similar choices have been made in the past. Similar choices that have put the sport right where it is now.

But, what do I know?  Maybe, I’m just someone part of the old culture that has kept handball from growing in the U.S. A culture of naysayers that think small when when they should have been thinking audaciously.  Or, maybe… I’m someone who has seen it all before, knows what the challenges are, what has worked, what hasn’t worked and why. In short, someone who really knows what they are talking about. 

Regardless, the next few months should be real interesting.  Real interesting.