How it unfolded
The EHF chose to hold the opening match of the 2024 men's European Championship not in a gymnasium but in Fortuna Dusseldorf's football stadium. On January 10, 53,586 fans filled the Merkur Spiel-Arena, setting the world attendance record for a handball match. The previous record, 44,189, had been set at a German Handball Day event in Frankfurt on September 6, 2014. The day was staged as a doubleheader: France beat North Macedonia 39-29 first, and then host Germany crushed Switzerland 27-14 in the opener. Germany's goalkeeper Andreas Wolff dominated the match with 13 saves and a 59 percent save rate. This was the first time a European Championship opener had been held in a football stadium. The tournament title itself, however, went to France, who beat Denmark in the final at Cologne's Lanxess Arena, while host Germany finished fourth without a medal.
Why it still matters
This was an experiment that erased handball's physical limits as an indoor sport for one day. On the strength of that box-office success, the EHF hardened a commercial strategy built around mega-events, and the European Championship and the Cologne FINAL4 subsequently became the sport's central revenue pillars. At the same time, this record also shows that handball's commercial base still concentrates in only eight or nine countries: Germany, France and the Scandinavian nations chief among them.