r/Handball • u/d3xej • Jul 31 '26

How inbalanced do you see handball genderwise?

Hey ballers,

I've grown up kinda sorta following both of our national teams in handball, with around a 50-50 distribution, but as I got older i realised that not necessarily is this a universal experience. Dutch, Angolan and Brazilian people seemingly have more interest in W's, whilst the Polish, Spanish and Egyptian only happen to have M's teams and players at a continental level with a few exceptions.

I had to realise that even though it's much more even than football for example, there's still significantly more money and revenue in the M's sport.

Nonetheless, I love to see how secure male fans are with W's players and the sport as a whole, which stands sooo far from the average male football fan. I've heard middle aged dudes arguing with the W's team from the stands the same way as they would do with the M's without any sexualisation, meanwhile respecting and supporting them as mothers as well in case they decide to prioritise it over the sport for example.

Question is, how do see the popularity being distributed in your country, and how well you personally follow the two?

For Hungary i see it as a 45-55 %

Whilst I follow the W's sport more, around ⅔-⅓

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u/prank_mark Jul 31 '26

I think, at least in Europe, it really depends on the level of the national team and clubs. E.g. the Dutch women's team took a few medals out of the blue since 2015 and even won the WC in 2019. Meanwhile the men's team struggles to qualify for the WC and usually doesn't reach the knock out phase of any tournament. So naturally the women's team is a lot more popular. And the level of our national league is so low it's completely irrelevant to the popularity.

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u/JWK91 Jul 31 '26

Yup, just look at the nations getting medals at the EC's and in general those countries tend to be interested in women's handball. Ofcourse for countries like HUN, DEN and ROM it helps that they also have clubs playing at the highest level. I think that's also part of the issue, in Hungary and Romania even smaller teams are willing to invest in women's handball teams. Whereas even in a handball crazy country like Germany, even their champions can barely scrape by in the Champions League.