The Paris 2024 Olympic Games produced a record for the attendance for a women’s handball match, with the quarter-final between France and Germany creating history for the sport.

26,548 spectators attended France's 26:23 win in the Stade Pierre Mauroy Arena in Lille, where the knockout phases of the men’s and the women’s handball competitions are scheduled, after the preliminary round took place in the South Paris Arena 6.

The attendance broke the previous spectators record for a women’s handball match of 20,022 spectators, which was set during the EHF FINAL4 in Budapest, in June 2023. 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.

“The Paris 2024 Olympic Games have set a new milestone in handball’s history, with over 26,000 spectators present in the Pierre Mauroy Stadium in Lille. This shows that the efforts made by the IHF over the last years have paid dividends, and  women’s handball has become more and more popular throughout the world. The atmosphere in the arena was absolutely fantastic and this only showcased handball on the biggest of stages, with the whole world watching our sport during the Olympic Games. Until this moment, over 400,000 spectators attended the handball matches in Paris and Lille at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and that can only be viewed as a success for handball and a sign that our sport is one of the most popular in the world,” said Dr Hassan Moustafa, the IHF President.

Prior before the match between France and Germany, the first quarter-final of the women’s handball competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, between Denmark and the Netherlands, had also broken the record, with 20,372 spectators watching the match which threw off at 09:30 CEST.

The men’s and women’s handball competitions have drawn over 400,000 spectators so far at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in the 62 scheduled matches so far, in the two arenas where they were played, the South Paris Arena 6 in Paris and in the Stade Pierre Mauroy in Lille, with the arena in the French capital usually sold out for all the 30 sessions which saw the best teams in the world collide on the path for the coveted medals.