Hannover-Burgdorf

Hannover shares its handball weekends between two arenas rather than one: for league fixtures TSV Hannover-Burgdorf usually sets up at the smaller Swiss Life Hall, then moves the biggest nights to the ZAG-Arena. The club's own story runs through a similar kind of reshuffling. It grew out of Freie Turnerschaft Burgdorf, a general sports association founded in 1922 that happened to include a handball section, became TSV Burgdorf in 1946, and only turned into TSV Hannover-Burgdorf on 1 July 2005, when the handball department was split off as its own limited company under the new name — a legal and branding change rather than a merger with any other Hannover side. Die Recken, as the club is known, have built their recent reputation on getting close rather than winning outright. In 2018 they reached the DHB-Pokal final and lost to Rhein-Neckar Löwen 30:26; a year later they went one better in Europe, reaching the EHF Cup final, only for Füchse Berlin to take it 30:28. Both runs fell under head coach Antonio Carlos Ortega. Timo Kastening spent twelve years in the squad before his departure in 2020, long enough to become one of the names supporters associate most with that era. On the pitch it is Hamburg that gives the fixture list its edge: games against HSV Hamburg are billed as the Nordduell, the north's own derby. The club remains a fixture of the Handball-Bundesliga, and its more recent European trips — including the 2023–24 and 2024–25 EHF European League campaigns — have taken it as far as the main round before the knockout stage.