No this isn't another one of those Tennis vs Badminton threads that tries to justify that one sport is harder than another. I want to ask a question to all of you and gather thoughts on what the sport of Tennis does that makes it the king of racket sports on an international level while Badminton is in its shadow. Tennis has so many big companies that sponsor their athletes and make it one of the most lucrative sports to be in while not needing to be in the very very top. I speak from a U.S. perspective though it is easily applicable to Europe as well. In Asia, Badminton is the Tennis of the East though it's gaining a lot of popularity as well. I'll start out with a few aspects of Tennis which I think makes it a more popular sport in the public view. 1) I think one of the most prominent differences that the BWF tried to address recently was the attire of Tennis athletes compared to Badminton athletes. There are plenty of beautiful of women on both sides of the sport but of course the Tennis women usually have very customized outfits that brings out their *** appeal. Of course, there are several top women Tennis players who model and bring men to their knees with their pictures. Sure it has nothing to do with Tennis but you can see how much publicity they get in the U.S. and adds to the attention of the sport. It's not forced on the players like the BWF has tried with the skirts, which is one of the differences. I mean seriously you look at Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic, and Anna Kournikova, these names have brought some serious publicity and attention to the sport they play. I can't say the same for badminton unfortunately. 2) Variety in the gameplay. I think the fact that Tennis has three different surfaces, grass, hardcourt, and clay, is interesting because it offers different play styles for each surface compared to Badminton where everything is on a mat. That's just a fundamental difference of the sport but it is one which I think adds some variety to Tennis on a year round basis. 3)American culture towards sports. Sports are only popular and receive lots of media attention if Americans are consistently good at the sport. Unfortunately at the moment, Badminton isn't one of those sports. Even with Howard Bach's and Tony Gunawan's 2005 MD win at the World Championships, they had their moment in the spot light but lost it once they didn't really win many other high-profile tournaments since. The same can be said of Soccer/Football in which the USA did very well in the World Cup in 2010. I remember only one name, Donavan. They were all over the news for a month, but I have not heard ONE mention of them for a longggg time. I don't intend this to be an insult to badminton in any way because I love badminton and play it every week, but I just want to see what the rest of you think about what differences in Tennis do you see make them so much more successful from an international and financial level.
1. Tennis was big long before the days of Kournikova and others. Starts like McEnroe, Lendl, Borg and Becker were able to stay in the spotlight without taking their clothes off. 2. I get frustrated at the lack of variety in television coverage of tennis. There's so much focus on singles, and doubles is the "poor cousin". This should be one of the strengths of badminton: we have five disciplines of almost equal status with some very different tactics.
I do agree on the doubles part, by far I think doubles in Badminton is on equal grounds in prestige and coverage with singles. In tennis you rarely hear about men's doubles, and even less about women's and mixed doubles. But just the singles aspect of Tennis alone dominates over all of Badminton. According to the U.S. badminton history, they used to be one of the top nations in the mid 1900's but somehow it turned into a backyard sport towards the latter half of the century and continues today. Yes, tennis was big back then, and it's just as big now as it was then. Your point about the skin-visual appeal being only a small part of Tennis's popularity is valid, it's really only begun in the last 10 years or so. Tennis and Badminton athletes before that were probably dressed the same, yet now we see that Tennis added the aspect of fashion while Badminton didn't. I don't think it was a conscious choice but rather the difference in the cultures from the West and the East where the focus of sports in the East wasn't looking good but rather playing well, which is a perfectly valid choice. But it came with consequences as to Badminton's appeal to the public. I'm aware this isn't the only factor that separates the popularity of the two sports, but it is a little sad that showing skin and curves from the women is probably very important to have any chance of becoming more popular in the west =(. More important than that though, we need a U.S. badminton star/team who can stand up the big Asian and European countries and do it consistently. Edit: Just saw the other thread that just got locked for talking about badminton skirts and being pretty. This discussion isn't revolved around that and I'm not trying to make it about that. It's more of a general overview of what badminton can improve on in its image to make it more popular for western countries. One of these things is learning from what the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Women's tennis Association (WTA) does successfully for the sport and perhaps the individual athletes as well.
Very good topic indeed. Unfortunately Im in the office right now, so I guess I have to get back to it as I want to write a long reply LOL. You guys go first, I'll catch up soon
Very interesting topic! I think one of the major differences that accounts for the popularity and success of tennis is that it is not ruled or solely represented by the national associations. This allows for any player to come up through the ranks solely on merit, and he/she is then eligible to play tournaments solely on the merit of his performance and ranking. Of course, there is the Davis Cup and the Federation Cup and so on, but the entire commercial thrust of the game is based on the ATP tour. We may compare it to the BFW calendar; however, the major difference is that BFW entries for many events can still be controlled by the national associations. And as a result it is the national associations that carry the burden and responsibility of promoting, managing and advancing the game in their respective countries. Most of them make a mess of the job at some time or other, setting progress back by a few years every now and then. (Note: My personal opinion. ) Once the free-market, free-agent approach has been established, it allows the creation of specialist coaching academies, and amateur (and not-so-amateur) and professional academies all over. Good coaches go about their business very professionally, and are in no way hamstrung by national interest or answerable to a national association. In fact, it all works in a sort of chummy harmony, for most of the time. In North America (in Europe as well? someone help me here...) you find tennis courts in parks, community centres, school yards, private backyards, swanky indoor gyms, and if they had their way, on seldom-used airport runways as well! Anyone can just walk up with a racket and balls (tennis balls, but the other ones help, too!) and start playing at most of these places. My 2.5c
Tennis is better than badminton as a spectator sport because balls are better than birds. Period. . No, seriously! And because of that there is greater media coverage and sponsorship and advertising etc. leading to greater popularity. Why better for spectators? 2 reasons: size of the projectile (ball) and trajectory of it. In tennis, the ball is bigger and more easily visible to a greater audience in a bigger venue. And because the ball can bounce once onto the ground first before being hit, it's easier for the spectator to follow the trajectory of the ball and understand the intricacies of spin, tactics, etc.
I tend to agree with this especially from a TV point of view. Badminton MUST get good TV exposure to succeed. The problem with watching doubles, which we pretty agree is the most exciting to watch, is the shuttle is travelling too fast. Can you imagine the uninitiated trying to follow a game. If I was one of them I'd be scratching my head. However... the advent of HD TV will definitely help the sport. The crisper, clearer pictures will make it easier for viewers to follow the passage of play. Now, if we could only expand badminton on TV into markets like North America. I'm still scrambling to get online coverage
I think it has much to do with perception. Many still think badminton is something to be play at the backyard by girls. Besides, why promote a sport which is dominated by Asians?
sorry to say that, but we need some good looking Caucasian, male and female, preferably American. and then have rich sponsor dress them up with good looking attire, and then they need to go stir up a rivalry ala Aggassi and Sampras. *then* we will start talking. the problem is that Asian marketing is no where near American marketing. when we have good badminton star, no one knows how to market them properly. bring their faces to the public and make them look cool and desirable to the respective gender audiences. and American won't market Asian players, so the solution is to have Caucasian players.
Kwun brings up a good point which I had in the back of my mind but I was waiting to see if someone mentioned it. The image of American athletes in almost every sport is a tall, well built (subjective term), and either black or white. You see it in Basketball, Baseball (more Latino players in this sport though), American Football, Soccer/Football, and Tennis, etc. the list goes on. If you look at Lee Chong Wei closely, most people on TV would think that he's a very thin and somewhat feeble looking person. Particularly his face. You wouldn't be able to tell without his sports clothing that he is just almost pure muscle. Americans like big burly men who are 250+ pounds or around 113 kg + who have huge muscles and bulldoze their opponents in a show of strength. For those who are unfamiliar with American Football, look it up on youtube, you'll know what I mean when I saw that is THE perfect example of the ideal American sport and athletes. Right now the face of East Asians hasn't quite broken into main stream sports in any of the high-profile sports which the exception of a few athletes like Yao Ming or the several Japanese players in Baseball. Michael Chang in Tennis I think was the closest guy to giving a more masculine image to Asian men in sports though even him I believe to some extent contributed a little to how the West views them. He was extremely fast, but he never possessed the overpowering shots that Agassi or Sampras had. He won through making his opponents make errors and retrieving every tennis ball he good. That's not the American way; to do that you have to blow your opponent off your court with a lightning fast serve or powerful groundstrokes in a display of dominance. Until the day comes where we got all of that in one big badminton star who is properly managed publicly in America, most likely White, we won't see any advances in badminton. Another thing that would help is if a big sports company like Nike would sponsor the clothing of athletes and perhaps add the same touches of style to the attire like they have with Tennis. If you remember, Badzine put up an April fools saying that they were going to do so, though apparently it wasn't completely false in that they had attempted to market some Badminton shoes or other equipment with no success. I think the racket sponsors for badminton are actually ok because now you see that not everyone is sponsored by Yonex, it's more mixed nowadays with Babolat, Wilson, and Head venturing into that area. Edit: I like some of the replies that came in. Keep writing!
Hmmm, if you ask those from Asia, badminton is far more popular. Ticket sales always full house for major tournaments, even at the increased prices. For the average people,it can be played in the garden, even on the road with the gate as 'net'. As for tv coverage, badminton is more exciting & fast. Tennis, to me , watching the ball going back & forth for hours is rather boring. I dont think tennis will overtake badminton in terms of overall popularity in Asia countries. At the end of it, it just depends where one is at. Of course, it helps when we have top players from our own country, more omp. When Western countries have more top playes, then the popularity at that side of the globe will go up.
Tactim, If you put it that way re power and muscles, then that is also where tennis has gotten boring for me and many people, especially over the last 10 years where the sport is more about how hard and fast you can serve and pound thru your opponent. Re power and muscles in North American sports, yeah, WASPY Americans do like them big and powerful like the Escalade SUV's that they drive. Even when comparing sport cars, US cars are about muscle and raw horsepower, not finesse and handling, unlike European cars. And North American sports are about muscle and power, that is the only way you'll beat your opponent. Hence, leading to the rampant overuse and abuse of steroids in their college and pro levels. You won't see this happen in badminton sport here or Asia because too much muscle bulk actually will impede your badminton stroke. It's more about fitness, footwork, technique and timing.
From an English perspective, Emms & Robinson did raise the domestic profile of badminton a little. Sadly, since her retirement, public interest has started to wane again. Would definately agree that badminton needs to be in HD though! Another reason for tennis'es relative popularity in England (though possibly not globally) is that tennis has been seen as a status symbol for the past 50 years or so. This was enforced during the glamour years of Borg & co when tennis players, formula 1 drivers etc. were style icons. In comparison, most people's experience of badminton was a cold & damp hall, metalic 2-piece rackets and warped plastic shuttles. Not quite Monte Carlo during the summer! I think badminton is slowly catching tennis. However, tennis still has a long headstart. What I feel is key is bridging the gap between purely recreational players and those who play for clubs. Clubs need more support to set-up and expand (adult as well as junior) beginner's groups. Growing participation will grow interest. Only then will badminton carve out a greater chunk of the tv schedule.
1. It's an Asian(to a lesser extent European) dominated sport; why would the Americans want to telivise or market a sport where they do not have any top athletes in? 2. Camera angles in badminton are inferior to the angles that can be captured in tennis;ergo, makes for a more interesting sport to watch. 3.Tennis has alot of "personalities", there is Nadal, who is eccentric and ritualisitc, Federer, who is calm as can be, and a whole slew of others. Something to think about: Chess wasn't popular in America until Bobby Fischer came around, it was more or less, no existent. It took a Fischer to popularize chess in America because he was "one of their own". Finally, America was winning a European, Russian dominated sport(yes I said sport) and it was all over the news. Albeit, Fischer garnered alot of attention do to his eccentric personality and crazy antics. Perhaps badminton needs a "Fischer" like personality to come and explode onto the scene for the North American's to take interest in this wonderful sport.
As popular as badminton is in Asia, the television coverage there can be called poor as well. Instead of waiting for the next Caucasian US star why doesn't badminton get tv coverage in Asia?? I mean if I am on holiday in say Indonesia I can watch 15 hours of (soccer) football live from all the big leagues for free yet I can barely watch any badminton. And outside of China/Hong Kong and Malaysia I'm quite sure the same lack is present in most Asian countries. In Japan even the Japan Open is on a subscription channel or satellite and anything else Super Series doesn't even get coverage iirc. Same for Korea, Vietnam, Thailand ... TV coverage = advertising opportunites = $$$ . I mean what good are those midgame 1 minute breaks if there are no commercials and the coverage simply continues ... Aside from that I think outdoor sports in general are more appealing and make for better tv ... You can't tell me there is more money to be made in the US for badminton than in an area which hold half if not more of the world's population. I mean the potential viewership on a public network is skyhigh ... I'm sure there are enough global brands that should appeal to ... Not sure how much that would impact the cost of broadcast rights though. Recently found out a certain sports channel (ESPN Europe) was going to be cancelled form the channels offered because it was too costly as they had to pay a fee based on potential viewership. So now it has been tied to another sports channel which rather than a package deal for 20 extra digital channels, has to be subscribed to independantly and as such has a lower potential viewership and therefore cost less to the cable company to broadcast. On a sidenote : I'm quite sure this debate has reared it's head more than once over the years, with probably the same questions and solutions .
I think the power aspect is interesting. One of the cool things about badminton is that most of the hardest smashers are Asian, and are either short and burly like Kido or Jung or wiry and tall only for badminton, like Tan or Fu. I like Kwun's point about the marketing but I hope it doesn't rely on having Caucasian stars. And I don't think it does. In the U.S., likely at one time, people thought that sports that were seemingly dominated by African Americans - like NBA basketball or boxing - needed a Great White Hope, but it has now been proven that this is optional. Still, all those sports had white players when they were gaining popularity, so it's not a fair comparison. I also am tempted to think that American marketing is over-rated. After all, soccer is marketed at least as well and that has nothing to do with Americans and is done with a more multicultural player base. I think Anna Rice hit the nail on the head in her interview on Badminton Life about the skirt issue. She points out that tennis creates stories for their players. This is, of course, largely possible because of the lack of influence of national associations, as cobalt points out. On one hand, I hope badminton doesn't take the tennis route whole hog because the specialist coaches that cobalt describes severely limit the talent pool and make it a rich kids' club, something that the systems in Korea and China have effectively kept at bay. Anna mentions media training for players in tennis and I think that's important but I think that it's conceivable for national associations to keep training low- or middle-income kids and also figure out that they will find it easier to get sponsorship if their players are known as real people as opposed to just players wearing a national jersey. I mean, in some cases, players and coaches have to be cajoled into giving press conferences. That is a no-brainer for a sport seeking greater publicity. No sports interest is going to be sustainable if TV coverage or press stories end at game point, no matter how big the projectile is or how photogenic the winners are. The other thing is that the badminton world is fantastically multilingual. With tennis and soccer, so many players speak English, as do some of the richest and/or most influential fans. Soccer is arguably more multilingual but more of the money is generated intranationally, where the press and the league share a language and it again isn't a fair comparison because they have so much more money for translators. In tennis, I believe many of the top players are still trained professionally in the U.S. or otherwise in situations where they need to pick up a lingua franca like English. In badminton, there are more players with mother tongues impossibly far from English and a smaller proportion of fans for whom interviews in English are accessible. Does any sport do a good job of getting their players conversant in a lingua franca other than English? Park Ji Sung now speaks enough English to get by in an interview after an EPL match but I am sure he knew no Dutch when he was playing in the Netherlands and I doubt that Park Ju Young will be giving interviews in French some day soon. Everyone agrees that it's easier for fans who do speak English to relate to interviews that Federer or Sharapova give in English than to translations by volunteers of interviews with Lee Yong Dae or Lin Dan. But if there are more badminton fans who speak Chinese than anything else, should the Thais, Koreans, and Danes be learning Mandarin? Would that help?
From what I can tell - and this seems to be borne out by your travel observations - Asian TV networks only deem things worth televising if they are shown on TV in Western countries. Korean 'sports' channels are dominated by sports like basketball, soccer, and tennis and even more by games like baseball and golf. Seems to be the same in China. How many times have you looked for a badminton tournament on CCTV or GDTV and found that it has been pre-empted by soccer or basketball?
Cobalt also mentions: Cobalt also mentions: But this also requires a mature and involved and inclusive outlook from the local communities and governing bodies...
Yes that is what I meant isn't it? Should we first make badminton popular for broadcast in the west for it to be popular for tv in the east ? Perhaps the question should be why isn't it popular on tv in the region the sport is the biggest? Instead of wondering why it isn't popular in the west ... In contrast to: http://www.badmintoncentral.com/for...to-Badminton?p=1681389&viewfull=1#post1681389 (I don't know how many whitening cream adverts I've seen in Asia over the years ) On a sidenote: I am half Asian after all and also have Asian friends here from all over the place (from Pakistan to Hong Kong to Vietnam to Indonesia to Phillipines to Korea and Japan). Badminton is a nice game to play but American sports and football are indeed far more popular and cricket not to forget. Those games have recognizable stars as does tennis as also mentioned above. Perhaps the Chinese Badminton League can someday end up being the Premier League of badminton with familiar teamnames rather than countries that depend solely on the odd star player every other generation ... I mean the ATP and WTA are like private leagues independant from the ITF(?) and solely have to focus on the singles game. As such a team based league is less obvious, unlike perhaps a Sudirman or Danish league style team based league for badminton ...
