Andre Amiel, President of the French Handball Federation (FFHB), and Dr Hassan Moustafa, President of the IHF, welcomed the press on Sunday morning to the final press conference of the Women's World Championship in Paris. All participants of this press conference honoured the tournament in France as the championship setting big signs for the future development of women's handball. "This tournament set several new records in women's handball", said Dr Moustafa, with regards to the number of venues, the number of volunteers, the number of spectators and the TV coverage. "The enthusiasm of the spectators was brilliant, even in halls that did not see matches of the host team", the IHF President stated. He was also proud of the progress teams like Angola showed: "This is a positive example groundbreaking for the future of women's handball", Moustafa commented. IHF Council member Carin Nilsson Green shared her President's opinion that women's handball has made a giant leap forward to a bright future: "We have to continue on the way we are now with the next World Championship 2009 in China. In 2003, we had 15 European teams among the best 16, now the continents of Africa, Asia or Pan-America are breaking up the European phalanx. A WCh tournament like the one in France is very important for the development of our sport in these continents." Dr Moustafa thanked host France for the "brilliant organisation of this World Championship and the great atmosphere in the halls. Nilsson Green reminded that this positive image is very important for the development of marketing and TV coverage of women's handball. 46 TV stations broadcast the WCh in more than 100 countries around the world. Altogether 166,350 tickets were sold for the 92 matches including this final day. This means an outstanding percentage of 93 percent of sold tickets. For the preliminaries and the main round, 78,436 tickets were sold, 42,145 spectators saw the matches of the President's Cup, 13,500 tickets were sold for the quarter-finals in Paris, 10,900 for Friday's placement matches on Friday - and this weekend the Palais Omnisports is fully packed.

IHF Executive Committee member Alexander Kozhukhov then presented the participants for the three Olympics qualifying tournaments resulting from the current WCh ranking:
Tournament 1: Winner of the match Germany - Romania, Hungary, Sweden, Cuba
Tournament 2: Loser of the match Germany - Romania, Angola, Japan, Croatia
Tournament 3: France, Korea, qualifier from Africa, Qatar

This seeding may change if Angola to host the African Olympic qualifying directly qualifies for the Beijing Olympics. In this case Poland will participate in Tournament 2, Hungary Tournament 2 and Croatia to Tournament 1.