It is part of the European Hockey Federation’s #equallyamazing drive with EHL Women joining EHL Men in presenting the best club hockey in the world.
Official European club hockey events for women were started in 1974 with the creation of the Club Champions Cup and the Cup Winners Cup was added in 1990. A massive growth in the demand for events saw us reformat both events into the EuroHockey Club Champions Cup in 2010 with five divisions and up to 40 clubs from around Europe competing.
This successful event morphed into the EHCC in 2014 with the best eight clubs in Europe battling it out in a knock-out competition and 4 divisions with promotion and relegation sitting under the top event.
The belief of the EHF in the women’s game and its importance in the hockey landscape saw the continental body underwrite prize money for the winners and runners-up, top umpires being appointed and live streaming of all games on our OTT platform www.eurohockeytv.org
Our drive towards EHL Women has always been on the agenda so that we could present our equally amazing women’s players with the same razzmatazz as EHL Men.
This new chapter has been made possible by our women athletes consistently delivering hockey that is worthy of a bigger platform and ABN Amro who understand that their support is vital to taking this fantastic step for hockey in Europe.
Eight women’s teams will battle it out at FINAL8 alongside the EHL Men’s FINAL8 team to become EHL Champions and lift the coveted EHL Trophy.
The competition will be fully produced for television, have a full video referral system in place and equal prize money with EHL Men.
An EHL U14 Girls competition will also be run in tandem with an EHL U14 Boys tournament. All four tournaments will form part of one big EHL weekend at one venue every Easter.
From the 2019/20 season, the competition will be based on a FINAL8 knock-out format, starting with quarter-finals leading into semi-finals and the grand final will ranking matches in place for those knocked out at the first stage.
Teams will qualify for EHL Women in a similar manner to before with the top two nations on the EHL rankings table earning two places in the competition while the next six nations will receive one entry.