Financial gap among handball players
HSV suffers license shock, forced relegation threatened
May 3, 2024, 7:16 p.m
No license for the 2024/25 season: HSV managing director Sebastian Frecke was still optimistic on Thursday that he would be able to meet the requirements of the handball Bundesliga. A day later the blue letter from the league association arrives. The people of Hamburg are taking action against the decision.
The handball Bundesliga (HBL) sent the shocking news for HSV Hamburg in the late afternoon, shortly before 5 p.m. The league association does not consider the condition for the license for the 2024/25 season to be met. This is about proving that a financial gap has actually been closed. The consequence: The Hanseatic League is not allowed to play and is the first to be relegated.
The eighth place in the table lodged an appeal against this decision in a timely and formal manner. This is available to the HBL Executive Board. If the license is refused, the people of Hamburg can still appeal to the association’s internal arbitration tribunal. The process can take several weeks.
“We are sure that we have met the condition,” HSVH managing director Sebastian Frecke was quoted as saying in a club statement: “We had to adjust some contracts in the last few days and thus bring payments forward so that the scenario calculated by the HBL A liquidity gap cannot occur like this. We did that and submitted all contracts to the league on time.”
HSV is worried and complains
Unfortunately, contrary to expectations, we still received negative feedback from the licensing commission. On Thursday, Frecke said with conviction at the microphone of the streaming service Dyn during half-time of the Bundesliga game against Bergischer HC, which had started the scandal against HSVH: “The documents have been submitted on time. We are in good spirits .”
HSV Hamburg’s license was subsequently revoked in the 2015/16 season. The club restarted in the fourth-class Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein Oberliga. Torsten Jansen took over as coach in 2017 and led the team back to the Bundesliga in 2021. Under new leadership, which included President Marc Evermann and Vice President Martin Schwalb, the club had earned a new reputation. In the last series, a starting place in the European Cup was narrowly missed.
The BHC, which lost the game against HSVH 30:32, declared on Thursday that it wanted to take legal action against HBL in order to gain more transparency in the licensing processes regarding HSV Hamburg. “According to the publicly available information, it is more than doubtful whether HSV Hamburg has met the economic criteria this season and will be able to meet them in the future,” the club said in a statement.
The BHC is currently in 17th place and would be the first to be relegated. If a license for Hamburg were not granted, the team currently coached by Arnor Thor Gunnarsson would be the big beneficiary.