"Best atmosphere in my life": Attendance record for women's handball broken again at Paris 2024

11 Aug. 2024

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games produced yet another record for the attendance for a women’s handball match, with the gold medal match between France and Norway breaking the previous record, set in the quarter-finals.

26,664 spectators attended the match between Norway and France, where the hosts conceded a 21:29 win, improving the previous record by only 116 spectators, with 26,548 spectators attended France's 26:23 win against Germany in the quarter-finals in the Stade Pierre Mauroy Arena in Lille.

In fact, six matches at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have broken the previous record for a women’s handball match, 20,022 spectators, set in 2023, during the EHF FINAL4 in Budapest. For an international match, the record was set in the 2013 IHF Women’s World Championship final, when 19,467 spectators watched the match between Serbia and Brazil in Belgrade, Serbia.

Those six matches also drove the total for the number of the spectators for the women’s handball competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games to 344,542, or an average of 9,067 spectators per match, with the provision that the first 30 matches were played in the South Paris Arena 6.

“Playing in a stadium like this, with over 26,000 fans is a fantastic feature for women’s handball. It was the best atmosphere I have ever experienced in my life. This gold medal is huge, but apart from that, I will always remember this atmosphere in which we won it,” said Henny Reistad, Norway’s top scorer in the final against France and the 2023 IHF Female World Player of the Year.

Highest-attended matches at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games – women’s handball competition