With Spain 2019 approaching the final day, it is clear that it has captured the imagination of handball fans across the globe.

In France, nearly 500,000 viewers watched ‘Les Bleus’ defeat hosts Spain in their eighth-final match on the La Chaine (L’Equipe’s streaming channel), with another 180,000 watching on Teledeporte in Spain live on national television, taking a 1.5% audience share of the evening TV audience. Over 30,000 views have already been recorded for the match on demand via the IHFtv YouTube channel.

The on demand stream also registered record figures for the quarter-final between Egypt and Norway which easily broke the 200,000 views total in the hours after the game and approached nearly 250,000 views a day after the North African side confirmed their place in the last four with their late comeback. Over 32,000 views have also been recorded of the match on RFEBM/Royal Spanish Handball Federation YouTube stream.

Over 20,000 views were recorded for the livestream of the eighth-final between Egypt and Serbia on the IHFtv YouTube channel in their, with 4,000 watching the match on demand immediately, and a total of over 115,000 views so far. Tunisia’s defeat of Sweden in the eighth-finals has already picked up close to 30,000 views already and the Egypt vs France semi-final had initial IHFtv figures of just over 110,000 views.

The final on Sunday will be broadcast on Spain’s Teledeporte which has seen the figures for games increase throughout the championship - in what is the first time the junior team have been on live TV in Spain.

The dramatic Spain vs Germany 9/10 placement match on Thursday night saw 121,000 watch live (1.3% of the TV audience), which was yet another six-figure audience following 105,000 vs Slovenia and 110,000 vs Japan, in addition to the previous audiences of their earlier games 74,000 (USA), 63,000 (Tunisia), 74,000 (Serbia) - clearly highlighting the growth of interest as the championship proceeded.

Eurosport Germany, who have been showing the Germany games live, saw 98,000 people on average watch their opening preliminary group match against Argentina (Tuesday/4pm German time), with 126,000 watching on average the re-run in the evening, while 218,000 on average tuned in for the Denmark clash the following evening at 6pm. 

The Saturday evening (8pm) Norway match saw 201,000 viewers on average watching with 160,000 (average) watching the replay on the following day. Iceland saw 152,000 people watching on average on the Tuesday afternoon (2pm). Their eighth-final against Portugal last Wednesday (6:45pm) saw an average of 210,000 watch with a peak of 340,000.

Figures correct as of 20:00hrs, 27/07/2019 (local time, Spain)