Punto Cero

Abstract

Punto Cero is an illustrated report related with one of the most undervalued sports in Spain: handball. We decided to work with this matter due to the reason that Spanish handball, women's and men's teams, are suffering a pandemic economic issue. This problem has been in Spain for many years, specifically, since 2008 with the real estate problem, known as the real estate bubble, causing a tremendous economic impact in this sport associated with the sponsorship, salaries and budgets of the clubs and underlining the disappearance of laureated clubs, such as, BM Ciudad Real or Atletico de Madrid, two of the most iconic teams in Spanish handball. Nowadays, Spain is one of the biggest powers as a national team in handball. We are two-time european champions (men) and runner-up in the World Cup (women). Even though, as the seasons go on, more and more players are deciding to go away from here, because of the huge economic problems. For that reason, Liga Sacyr ASOBAL and Liga Guerreras Iberdrola are becoming the biggest talent export leagues, reducing their own level of these leagues. So, the aim of this report is to make visible this dramatical situation and to propose or contribute possible solutions to solve the circumstance that national handball is going through. Firstly, writing about the main characters of our project are divided into 5 different scopes related to people who have an essential role in this sport : players, coaches, executives, economists and journalists. Furthermore, we concluded that we would have to make various trips in order to interview the best good name people of handball in Spain. Regarding the area of players, we decided to go to Granollers (Catalonia, Spain) to interview Antonio Garcia Robledo, BM Granoller’s player, because of his excellent career with the objective to find out the economic differences between Liga Sacyr ASOBAL and the major leagues of handball. In his career stands out honours like Liga Sacyr ASOBAL, Copa del Rey and a gold medal (World Cup, Spain, 2013), silver (Eurocup, Poland, 2016) and bronze (Eurocup, Denmark, 2014) with the Spanish national team. Moreover, it highlights the experiences with Barcelona (Spain), PSG (France), SC Pick Szeged (Hungary), KIF Copenhague (Denmark) and CSM București (Romania). Another important character 16 for us were Lysa Tchaptchet, CB Elche and Spanish national team player, in order to share her experience as a player of Liga Guerreras Iberdrola and the challenges that they have to overcome to earn a living with their passion: handball. So, we went to Elche (Comunitat Valenciana, Spain). In addition, writing about the coaches field, we marked two objectives: Jordi Ribera Romans, current coach of the Spanish national team (men) and with a long experience as a manager (37 years) of important teams in Spain (CD Bidasoa and Ademar Leon) and with reputed national teams, such as, Argentine and Brazil, and Joaquin Rocamora, today’s coach of CB Elche (women) and former coach of the U-17 Spanish national team (women) and of the Comunitat Valenciana team (women). We selected both people to explain the economic issues which they have to deal with day per day and to expound the differences between Spanish leagues and the best leagues (France and Germany). It is necessary to emphasize that CB Elche, with one of the lowest budgets of the entire women's first league, takes up the second place of the classification. Taking into account the executives area, we opted to interview the presidents of Sacyr, main sponsor of the Spanish Handball Federation and the company which has the naming rights of the Spanish men's leagues (Liga Sacyr ASOBAL and Copa del Rey) and Iberdrola, the same as Sacyr but with the women's leagues. Although it was not possible to interview the president of Sacyr (Manuel Manrique Cecilia), we got its director of communications, Pedro Alonso Ruiz. We made the interview by Zoom due to the coronavirus protocol of the company. From Iberdrola, we did not get any answer. With both interviews we tried to find out the reasons and advantages and disadvantages of sponsoring Spanish handball. Getting inside of the economists group, we chose distincts professionals, for example: Antonio Miguel Carmona Sancipriano and Jano Garcia. We only got an answer from Carmona. So, we went to Madrid to make the interview. Carmona is one of the most reputed economists of our country, he is a Doctor in Economic Sciences and he has participated in Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also took part in the general Assembly of Atletico de Madrid football club. He has been a fundamental source with the purpose of understanding the 17 present context of the sport economy, focused on the handball scene. In the report he talked about the capability of survival in this sport and suggested that it’s directly related with showing it on TV and popularice on schools. Carmona, as the other interviewees, claimed handball’s regression is associated with the lack of visibility. Finally, writing about journalists sources, we determined to interview Luis Miguel Lopez. He worked for 30 years at RTVE (national public Spanish channel) and he is the current narrator of Gol Television (national Spanish channel) for Liga Sacyr ASOBAL games. Additionally, he was the general manager of BM Ciudad Real and BM Atletico de Madrid. The interview was made by Zoom because of the Covid-19 recommendation of the interviewee. Lopez, told us that the structures during the boom years in the Spanish handball were old-fashioned and not well founded. As a result, at the beginning of the real estate bubble, many clubs, such as those mentioned above (BM Ciudad Real and BM Atletico de Madrid), disappeared or were at risk of doing so. Since then, Spanish handball has been going through its own particular exodus in which both players and coaches have had to emigrate in order to make a living from this sport. Secondly, writing about the specific strengths and weaknesses points of our project: On the one hand, the greatest strength of our report are the interviewees. We have been able to interview eminent figures from the economy, business and handball. We have also been able, thanks to these sources, to give, from our point of view, a good portrait of what is happening in the world of handball and how the economic situation affects it in particular. At the same time, another of the project's strong points is the synthesis capacity that we have had by creating the final product. The recorded material allowed us to present a report of more than 45 minutes, so we have put much effort synthesizing properly all the information. On the other hand, one of the most significant weaknesses has been the representation of women in the project. It has to be said that we have done our best to have more female players and coaches, but we could only include Lysa Tchapchet. We thought of Montse Puche, head coach of BM Morvedre, but it was not 18 possible to interview her because she was fired from the club 3 days before agreeing the time and place of the interview. Then, we did not have an answer from her to make the interview. It should be underlined that she was the only female coach, with Cristina Cabeza, Balonmano Alcobendas manager, in Liga Guerreras Iberdrola. Moreover, another source of information that we wanted to have was Francisco Blázquez, president of the Spanish Handball Federation, but he was not able to be interviewed because of his serious health condition related to Covid-19. In addition, another improvable matter is the location of some interviews, for example, in the conversation with Tchapchet and Rocamora, as well as with Garcia, we could not go to the court game due to the training of other teams of the club, so we made the interviews in the video room or in the press room. We also had problems with the Carmona´s interview, the camera was almost broken and the spotlight reflected behind him. But we could not change the room where we were because of the rules of CEU San Pablo University (Madrid). To sum up, Punto Cero is an illustrated sport report associated with handball which aims to show the difficulties that professional people have to deal with in order to enjoy and earn a living from their passion. Spanish handball needs the support of public institutions, players, coaches, executives, social media, citizens, etc to make it great again. This experience was fantastic, we have learnt many things about this sport and our future profession, we have met famous people, but above all, we had fun together, we have enjoyed a lot the trips that we made. We will never forget this excellent adventure. Finally, we would not like to finish the brief without thanking Rafael Mora Sesma and Amador Iranzo Montés because of their support and help to make this report possible.