TheStar
PETALING JAYA: The six-star US$250,000 Hong Kong Open badminton championships, scheduled from Dec 6-12, have been cancelled.

With the decision, the Malaysian shuttlers will now have only four Open tournaments before the year end.

They are the tournaments in China (Nov 9-14), Singapore (Nov 15-21), Taiwan (Nov 30-Dec 5) and Indonesia (Dec 13-19).

Malaysia were not represented in the last week's Dutch Open and in the ongoing Danish Open following the Badminton Association of Malaysia's (BAM) decision to suspend the national players from international tournaments for two months.

By not playing in tournaments during the one-year qualifying period for next year's World Championships (Aug 15-21) mean that the national shuttlers lose gaining valuable points towards qualification.

Does anybody have any reasons why it has been cancelled?

cancelled?? :confused: are they kidding??

HK open is big.....

yeah. interesting part is that i did a search of the HK/Chinese newspapers via Google, and none of them mentions this. nor does the IBF website... i wonder about the authenticity of the claim...

:eek: It's real!! :eek:

http://www.worldbadminton.net/Portal/desktopdefault.aspx?tabid=20&itemid=4359

Loss of sponser!!:(

whoa!!! :crying: :crying: :crying:

thanks BJ for digging that one out.

so it is real. the 6* HK Open won't happen this year. but at least we will have the Indonesian Open. but what a pity for HK badminton fans..!!

I wonder who the sponser is ...... :rolleyes:
6 star open is gone......wow.....that's not good. :(

But we still have China open (6*) in november and Indo open (5*) in december. Phew~ :)

:crying: :crying: NOOOOOO

I booked holiday to go and see it :crying: :crying: What happened? HK economy is on the up.

time to cancel those holidays!

luckily i didn't plan my holiday around the HK Open. that would be very disappointing!

Its real pll.. no joke.. maybe Aviva will take over as Sponsor next year's HK Open.

the HKBA seems to have problem gathering sponsors. the HK Open is the most cancelled Open in recent history. they need better staff to handle selling the sponsorship!

i wonder if Aviva have enough business in HK to justify a sponsorship...

the HKBA seems to have problem gathering sponsors. the HK Open is the most cancelled Open in recent history. they need better staff to handle selling the sponsorship!

i wonder if Aviva have enough business in HK to justify a sponsorship...

because sponsor knows the trend and want to maximize value of their sponsored dollars.

this really sucks... :crying: :crying: :crying:

I think Aviva have enought resources to put up an event in HK.. anyway we will see who will be the net Major Sponsor next year.. if they still don't have.. maybe IBF will scrap off the HK Open.. i hope not.

How ridiculous.. what are players going to do with teh big gap between Taiwan and Indo open?

:eek: It's real!! :eek:

http://www.worldbadminton.net/Portal/desktopdefault.aspx?tabid=20&itemid=4359

Loss of sponser!!:(

If losing a sponser, can't they just downgrade teh tourny rather than cancel it??? I mean, even a 4 or 5* tourny might be better than none. :confused:

How ridiculous.. what are players going to do with teh big gap between Taiwan and Indo open?
Vacation, I guess :D:D

If losing a sponser, can't they just downgrade teh tourny rather than cancel it??? I mean, even a 4 or 5* tourny might be better than none. :confused:
Loss of sponser might cause them not able to pay for the equipment of the tournament. The court pads, judges, shuttles, .....etc all cost money. Imagine how much it would cost to buy 1000 tubes of top grade shuttles? Plus the wages of the judges and empires....labor is not cheap ;)

So, they need to have money prior to the games....if they are just short of money, they can't even get the games to start, not to mention the prize money might just be just a dollar ! :p