Hamburg

Hamburg beat FC Barcelona 30:29 in the final of the EHF Champions League in 2013, the high point of a run that had already brought the German title in 2011, when the club ended THW Kiel's hold on the championship. The DHB-Pokal followed twice, in 2006 and 2010, alongside the EHF Cup Winners' Cup in 2007 and four editions of the DHB-Supercup. The club was built by Heiner Brand and later shaped by Per Carlen on the bench.

The club was formed in 1999 out of the handball departments of VfL Bad Schwartau and HSV Lübeck, starting life as Handball Sport Verein Lübeck before the move to Hamburg in 2002 brought the current name.

The Bundesliga licence was pulled in January 2016, after insolvency proceedings and the exit of investor Andreas Rudolph exposed how thin the club's finances had become. Hamburg dropped to the Oberliga, the fourth tier, and had to build back up from there. Under president Marc Dieter Evermann and coach Torsten Jansen, that rebuild reached the 2. Handball-Bundesliga title in 2021 and a return to the top flight the following season.

The Nord-Derby against Kiel still carries the old weight, sharpened by the 2011 title race between the two, and SG Flensburg-Handewitt provides the other fixture Hamburg's supporters mark on the calendar. Home games are played in red and blue, the colours of a side known as Die Hanseaten, at the Alsterdorfer Sporthalle.