Korean Open Crowds

Discussion in 'Korea Open / Hong Kong Open 2006' started by Eurasian =--(O), Aug 25, 2006.

  1. Eurasian =--(O)

    Eurasian =--(O) Regular Member

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    Are there actually any real crowds at the Korean Open? Is this event going to make money? All the pics I've seen show tiny gatherings of people. Was the Korean Open not advertised or is badminton not as popular as one would think in Korea?
     
  2. Qidong

    Qidong Regular Member

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    Yes, that's sad. People said badminton is not popular in US, but we have way more spectators last year in Anaheim. So they should bring more 5/6* events to the US, especially San Jose. Definitely we will have more spectators than the Korean Open.
     
  3. event

    event Regular Member

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    The crowd was very disappointing today. Advertised? Is that a joke? This is badminton. Who advertises? The answer to your other question is that if you would think that badminton would be popular here, then you are correct in deducing that badminton is not as popular here as you would think. I've alluded to this in many other threads. The average recreational player (and there are one or two million, many of whom devote most of their leisure to playing the sport) don't know that the Korea Open is on now. A big group showed up today al in matching T-shirts and with some barbie doll girls paid to tell them when and how to cheer. They all cheered very loudly on cue and if the girls missed a big play, at first the group did nothing. They went home after their 2-hour contract was up and Hwang Hye-youn was left trying to do battle with Lu Lan with basically no home crowd support. The arena was practically silent. A group of 20 or 30 Malaysian spectators were making more noise in support of Wong Mew Choo in her game than the hundreds of Koreans were for Hwang, who really needed them. It likely didn't help that fewer than half of them had ever heard of Hwang Hye-youn. I felt so sorry for her after Lee Hyun-il had loads of cheering that he didn't even need to defeat Sairul.

    Tomorrow will definitely be different. There are busloads of cheering teams that pay membership fees to support the Korean domestic teams and they will be out in force on the weekend as will many others who will finally have the time off work. It should be full and rowdy. I'm still expecting an Indonesian contingent, too, but they didn't show up again today. The Malaysians should be back again to cheer on Roslin and Wong but they will be dwarfed by the numbers and volume of the Koreans for the first time tomorrow.
     
  4. kemana

    kemana Regular Member

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    so, i guess home crowd is not a factor in LeeHI's victory against TH....
    fine, makes me worry more
     
  5. cooler

    cooler Regular Member

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    why:confused: You made some money bets on TH:confused:
     
  6. cooler

    cooler Regular Member

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    event, what is the national sport of Korea or South Korea? what sports most broadcasted on their TV? Tae kwon doe, baseball?
     
  7. kemana

    kemana Regular Member

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    not yet, thinking about WC,haha
     
  8. Eurasian =--(O)

    Eurasian =--(O) Regular Member

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    Probably just that TH is not the amazing player he once was. Maybe his time is up, nothing left in the bag.

    Event, what is Badminton Korea trying to do in regards to advertising? Even like a couple brochures or posters at major fitness facilities would bring in at least a couple dozen if not hundreds. Seriously, get 100 posters, put them in schools, gyms, and on the street. It will attract people. This lack of even the simplest and cheapest form of advertising by all badminton associations not only worries me, the lack of action makes me almost feel apathetic. Its like they aren't even trying.
     
  9. hara^kazuko

    hara^kazuko Regular Member

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    Malaysians are everywhere, don't u think so? :D
     
  10. ctjcad

    ctjcad Regular Member

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    agree!..:):rolleyes: :D ...
     
  11. ctjcad

    ctjcad Regular Member

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    Could it be..

    Hmm, this just crossed my mind, don't know why i just though abt it, could it possibly be that the lack of crowds/attendance that we're seeing at this KO is mainly due to the lack of the top players competing?? Esp. players from CHN(ie. LD, CH, ZN, XXF, the doubles pairs), as well as Gade, Mia??...what do you guys think??..:rolleyes: :p
    What i would be surprise more is if next week's HK Open suffer the same fate as this KO(which i hope it won't). Considering all the top guns will be coming to town and all our BC representatives(wink,wink) will be awaiting them, ready with their digicams to take pics..;):p
     
    #11 ctjcad, Aug 25, 2006
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2006
  12. elwin81

    elwin81 Regular Member

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    Yes hara, you are right. During the All England here in birmingham, I was amazed how many malaysia supporters were here to cheer their national players. Most of them are students and some are people who work here.
     
  13. madbad

    madbad Regular Member

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    No, I don't thnk so. According to Event, nobody knows the Korean Open is on. Let's face it, Korea is just not a badminton nation in the same way as INA or MAS. HK Open is a different matter. I bet it will be well attended.
     
  14. cindie

    cindie Regular Member

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    This is a sad thing when Korea actually produces a lot of good badminton players. Is HK a badminton nation?
     
  15. hara^kazuko

    hara^kazuko Regular Member

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    What I see from tv, the seats in final were well-attended, but not entirely full, there are more empty seats than the occupied ones
     
  16. cao ci dan

    cao ci dan Regular Member

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    :D i already bet my money on LD to win WC..:cool:
     
  17. event

    event Regular Member

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    That's right. Nobody knows who Lin Dan is (I mean among those who didn't come) so having him here wouldn't help. I could have sworn that we had bigger stadiums closer to capacity the last 3 years anyway for the final days: that is in Incheon in 2003, Choongju in 2004 and Incheon again in 2005. I thought that hosting it in Seoul would make a difference but it didn't mean a big increase in attendance, in fact probably a decrease. The slight increase in ticket price may have made a difference. I can't remember what it was last year but this year they sold tickets over the internet and some people may have been discouraged and were afraid they wouldn't get a seat. In previous years, everybody knew it wouldn't cost much and that they'd be able to get a seat.
    Apart from the notices on the badminton websites, they may have had posters up at local badminton gyms. Some word of mouth through local badfeds and local clubs but they wouldn't expect much else to work...ie if they tried to target the general public. There are so many events in Korea and all of them are accessible by all 44 million people because the place is so dense and public transportation goes everywhere. So since it is possible to go to see everything, many people don't go to see anything. Does that make any sense? It's a tough sell to people who aren't already interested in badminton. In fact, most people who are into badminton, their interest is limited to playing. Many people play every single day or close to it but they still have never heard of Jung Jae-sung. So it's that much harder to sell to the average people whose steady sports diet consists of the same thing it does in the U.S.: baseball, basketball, and golf (no "football" or hockey) and one non-U.S. interest: football(soccer). Still, some of the articles I've posted links to in recent weeks about Lee Yong-dae, etc. have actually appeared in the mainstream sports news, not just the badminton magazines. In some cases I see them in the badminton mag websites but they are re-printed from a general sports paper.
    Well, I have come close to answering this above and in some other threads. World Cup soccer took over the airwaves here for a month just like anything else but K-League soccer, while gets vastly more airplay than badminton despite the gap in relative quality, is not that popular. Soccer is by far the top sport by participation, both elite and recreational. Baseball is shown every single night on all three "sports" channels just like it is in the U.S. and no one plays baseball here except those in the elite system. There is virtually no recreational baseball. Basketball is fairly popular.

    Golf is on the maintstream "sports" stations far too much even though there are at least two 24-hour golf TV stations. Only rich people actually play it and rich people wannabes use the ubiquitous driving cages(not enough space here for ranges so they drive into big green nets strung up over very little real estate) but, of course, only rich people own TV stations so the correlation there is obvious and is not necessarily dependent on the actual preferences of the viewing public. Rich people are also most likely to be able to buy products advertised by those who pay for the golf programming and wannabes are most likely to buy said products even if they can't afford them.

    I may have read somewhere that badminton was #2 by participation here. Recreational sports and elite systems are 100% separate in Korea. The amazing thing is that so few kids get access to any elite system at an early age but even though the system chooses from among so few, they still end up with so many world-class athletes even in a sport like badminton where they are competing with a country of 1.4 billion in which the sport is more popular. So the elite system is the same size or slightly larger than it is for other sports like handball or field hockey or volleyball but nobody takes up those sports as adults. No kids outside of the elite systems ever play any of these sports in middle or high school and very few do in university. The typical case with badminton is for people to start at around age 30, get coaching by great coaches who came up through the elite system and probably made the national, junior national or at least provincial team, and then end up being able to beat me even though their 2 years' experience pales in comparison to the more than two decades that I've spent hopelessly hacking away at my pillar of bad habits.
     
  18. taufik-ist

    taufik-ist Regular Member

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    i will bet taufik in WC for 1 to 10 :)
     
  19. hara^kazuko

    hara^kazuko Regular Member

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    Lee Chong Wei has my bet
     
  20. taufik-ist

    taufik-ist Regular Member

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    any money left for betting taufik :D
     

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