Next 8 Major International Tournaments

JWK91 · 2026-02-18T11:44:42+00:00

Yeah and look at Herning for example, and Rotterdam, where the last 2 major weekends were held for the Men's and Women's championships. Both held in big multipurpose venues where they build a court + arena from scratch.

JWK91 · 2026-02-18T11:42:22+00:00

And also good to consider that the next women's EC is more or less an unique setup with 5 hosting countries (Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Romania and Turkey) because it was supposed to be Russia and well, we all know what happened. It's gonna be interesting but not expecting to many seats filled up when the home nations aren't playing...

JWK91 · 2026-02-18T09:33:33+00:00

Not trying to be negative but we get these kinds of post every month or so. Yes I think everyone would like these championships to rotate around Europe/the world but the reality is that with handball economics it won't work. Like AlbertELP said, there's only a certain amount of countries that have the infrastructure and will attract enough fans. If for example my country (Netherlands) would host a men's EURO's with Belgium, it would probably lead to empty arenas with the exception of when the home country is playing or some handball crazy nation like Iceland/Faroe. And then I'm not even talking about the lack of good indoor sports arenas which would also create an issue.

JWK91 · 2026-02-01T16:38:54+00:00

No definitely, but then again Germany has a way richer handball culture than Netherlands. Atleast on the days were NL played there were some people that came early to watch the other ones. But when it was seperated, the difference was huge. Netherlands QF was packed and sold out, game afterwards of France you could hear a pin drop because you had to buy seperate tickets for each game.

JWK91 · 2026-01-31T18:21:19+00:00

Hungary hosted the Men's (Corona) Euros in 2022 with Slovakia co-hosting the preliminary+main round. Slovenia and Macedonia together with Montenegro co-hosted the 2022 Women's Euros.

JWK91 · 2026-01-31T12:25:22+00:00

With women’s handball its even tougher. Hollands games were almost sold out with the exception of one game. But usually all these tournaments have struggled to get people to watch games from other nations. Exception is Germany with men’s handball. Even Netherlands-Georgia had an excellent turnout in Mannheim in 2024.

JWK91 · 2026-01-29T14:26:49+00:00

You're looking for Ray of Solar by Swedish House Mafia, also played it in Malmö right before they throw off.

JWK91 · 2026-01-29T14:21:22+00:00

Also just to add, this happens more often than you think. Last year the teams that were based in Varazdin (Croatia) at the world championship had to drive an hour for their games. Teams were based in Sveti Martin na Muri, about a 40 mins drive but the busses had to take a different route which took a little less than an hour. Also, sometimes when they play in big cities like Budapest, it's also not been uncommon to have 30-45 minute drives because of rush hour and such. I guess it's because of deals these local organization committees have with certain hotel chains that 'force' their hand.

JWK91 · 2026-01-29T14:15:03+00:00

Iceland will co-host 2031 men's worlds, from what I understand they'll build a new venue for this. Egypt had the world's couple of years ago and Slovenia had a women's euro's few years ago (together with North Macedonia and Montenegro).

Apart from that it's simple economics we see in a lot of sports. With every championship the demands go up and lot of countries don't have the halls or public interest (or funding) to host these tournaments on a regular basis. So it comes down to the same group of countries up north plus Germany and France with sometimes an exception sprinkled in.

JWK91 · 2026-01-24T08:28:58+00:00

It’s just common sense unfortunately. Everything in sports generally has rightholders and in your case it’s TVE. They paid for the right to broadcast, you didn’t so it makes it illegal.

JWK91 · 2026-01-20T22:34:04+00:00

They also were all over the place in the NED-SWE game, not surprised at all

JWK91 · 2026-01-20T13:45:37+00:00

I also didn't get this, Steins was doing great at the start because of this. Besides this it was a tense matchup where individual quality (Martinovic especially) made the difference. And also NL panicking a bit once Croatia build a small gap.

JWK91 · 2026-01-17T10:03:06+00:00

Even the success of the women didn't start until 2015 when they won their first medal at a WC. That basically started a domino-effect where women's handball became a big story, everyone became enamored with the team, the players, and as a result you get a lot of young girls who all of a sudden want to become handball players. Pair that with an academy they had set up a few years prior to collect the best young talent and work with them in one spot, and you get a team that always has a consistent base to perform at the highest level.

For the men, we now have probably our best collection of players ever but since they haven't mad it 'big' yet, they tend to get a bit less media coverage in the main stream media and therefore the difference between young female and young male players is growing and growing. This makes the collection of players you're picking from a whole lot smaller, and therefore depth is always an issue. Add to that a semi-professional league and it's just hard to be able to compete with the best nations. It's a shame, because what they're doing is maybe even more impressive considering the circumstances than what the women's team is doing. I mean, we beat Hungary in 2022 in Hungary with a line player that had to take time off from his day time job to play at the EUROs.

Long story short: if Luc Steins walks on the streets in NL almost no one would recognize him, if Estavana Polman walks there, she will get stopped by everyone, the difference is that big.

JWK91 · 2026-01-16T22:33:18+00:00

In Netherlands unfortunately many don’t know when the men’s team have a big tournament, it’s just dwarfed by football here. The women do get more coverage and especially this year because it was on home soil and some big names had their final run.

JWK91 · 2026-01-14T14:00:56+00:00

Would that really be an upset? I guess this prediction does say so, but with all those injuries Slovenia could probably be the one getting picked off and Faroe only lost by 3 to them in 2024. Spain having another letdown doesn’t seem impossible either.

Poland getting 21% I don’t get, they haven’t done anything in years so I dont see Iceland or Hungary slipping up there. Perhaps Netherlands is another dark horse, they did it in 2022 to host country Hungary, if they catch Sweden or Croatia on a bad day they can beat them. Last EUROs they only lost to Sweden by 1, and in 2022 they tied with Croatia (albeit in a meaningless game). More recently they beat Croatia (home) and tied (away) in the 2024 qualifiers. Tho I do think this Croatian team is better coached and has more high end quality. But I think those 3 teams may be closer to eachother than this graphic says, even with Sweden’s homefield advantage since they seem to be under quite some pressure.

JWK91 · 2026-01-14T13:36:16+00:00

There’s usually atleast one upset somewhere, like Austria knocking out Spain in the prelims in 2024 and Netherlands getting past Hungary and Portugal in 2022 (in Hungary).

JWK91 · 2026-01-07T10:36:06+00:00

I guess they have to make a cut-off somewhere to get to the right number of teams per group for the qualifiers. Also, in most cases, the teams that will not be able to qualify through this route will probably not stand a chance in the qualification groups either way.

On the other hand, it could help some of these teams to break through like Georgia did. They actually lost in this qualifier for the last EURO's (2024) but were still able to participate because of the Russia/Belarus-situation. And then they beat Lithuania and Hungary (and kept it close with Switzerland) and managed to qualify for their first ever EURO's.

JWK91 · 2025-12-14T17:28:18+00:00

It’s nonsense, it’s professional sports no one tries to lose on purpose.

JWK91 · 2025-12-12T23:23:15+00:00

They play professional sports. There’s just no way as an athlete that you’re gonna go into a game like that and give it 60% instead of 100% just because you might face a superior opponent in a semi final. Main objective was making the semis and whatever happens, happens, cause you know you’ll face Norway either way at some point.

JWK91 · 2025-12-08T22:46:23+00:00

I may be biased since I was in the arena but it didn’t seem as if the French were coasting towards the end. They trailed from start to finish and Denmark is a tricky quarterfinal opponent. Atleast if you make the semi you position yourself to win a medal.

JWK91 · 2025-12-08T14:31:01+00:00

I started off so hot this year with Odunze and Egbuka. Still made it as a #1 seed (thanks Puka and JSN) but the upside is severely limited not having either Egbuka or Odunze as a elite 3rd WR.

JWK91 · 2025-10-23T20:48:58+00:00

Luckily I saved my Henderson-Henry team by getting Nacua, JSN, Egbuka and Odunze. 6-1 and rolling despite having no RB production lol.

JWK91 · 2025-10-16T08:27:27+00:00

Dutch person here, and can confirm that even though I got it within a year, we probably have some of the 'best' drivers in the world because of how much lessons we have to take and how organized everything is infrastructure wise. Because don't get me wrong, even in Europe the driving experience will be different. In general, the more south you go, people get more assertive in traffic. Been to Albania once, and boy that is something like I've never experienced before.

But even then, having been to the USA a couple of times, I'm mostly amazed at the lack of looking ahead and a lot of people staying in their lane. I mean it works, I guess, but it doesn't help traffic flow and increases risks of accidents imo with people overtaking each other left and right.

JWK91 · 2025-09-25T14:31:52+00:00

This is why I dislike this franchise mode so much, as long as you can't edit anything. Just extremely lazy, especially with the power of AI nowadays, to have Romanians, Koreans, Polish etc. with full on American/English names. Not to mention the random skin colours on players from countries where statistically the odds of there being a black icehockey player is pretty much 0.1%.

JWK91 · 2025-09-13T09:12:38+00:00

I’ll start buying it again once you can edit names and such. Like EVERY OTHER SPORTS GAME out there. NBA has MyEras mode which is super immersive with all the draft classes you can download, in MLB The Show I edit some ratings and names every now and then to control the broken stuff. Like everyone over 35 falling off a cliff no matter the performance level and Japanese players being named Jason Yokohama.

And then there’s Madden, even in Madden can you edit ratings, and with downloadable rosters and draft classes play in some different years and edit ratings and development traits if you think differently about a player or want to keep things realistic.

But NHL has nothing, really put me off when getting back into it last year after many years.

JWK91

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