been hearing this since 2005. Is China in some outer space of Badminton World that the '' catching up'' hasn't finished yet?
When China hold none of the Sudirman, Uber and Thomas cups, that would be a clear signal of the end of Chinese dominance. I'm sure they're training plenty of youngsters in order to regain that dominance though.
Term "BWF World Tour" will officially replace "BWF World Superseries". SS Finals become World Tour Finals, and the champion will get higher points (12,000 points compared to 11,000 points in 2017)
that sounds so tennis, I don't like it (at the moment)...... anyway, will we have the term GP? or is it also erased?
Considering Tennis is wildly more popular and profitable, taking a leaf out of their book doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
Tennis is not more popular than Badminton. Its just discrimination toward Asian that make it look that way. How is a sport played between China and India is not more popular than the rest of the world considering China and India is accounting almost half of the world population (and also discounting Africa for both sports)
Absolutely Thanks @cxytdn I really appreciate all these tables and charts that you prepare. Must be very time consuming. Your interest in statistics and love for badminton second to none. Keep them coming
do you have any data to dispute it? my point is true popularity is impossible to measure. tv ratings is only one aspect. how can you measure world-wide participation with any accuracy? no doubt tennis has more $, but so does practically all other sports... because they have many major corporations giving millions of dollars. consider golf. definitely not one of the world's most popular, but one of the world's richest. why is that? rich and generous sponsors.
to be more direct, China and India accounts to what 3billions people - or so. just because most of them are poor and watch in rural areas dont mean its not popular, i will say its more popular than tennis.. Of course tennis has more tv coverage, watched by rich europeans and americans in urban landscape.money and played in many countries ( so country wise i would say tennis is more popular) but in terms of population, no. Imo everything is discrimination. its like saying, you are asia citizens and you watch badminton dont contribute to the popularity of the sports just because the sport dont generate enough money for the first world country.
This is not really how argumentation works, is it? If you make a sweeping statement, you have to back it up. THEN sombody can refute it (or agree). It is certainly difficult. Tv ratings as you've mentioned, registered players for the various associations in different countries, scientific research via polling, social media following, and so on. And I definitely agree with you and @Yoji that there is a western bias in both measuring and assessing a sport's popularity. Heck, basically all popular sports these days - including badminton - have western roots. Rankings like these http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/worldfame100/espn-world-fame-100-top-ranking-athletes# are of course flawed to the max. They measure popularity by social media following (all American: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and Google search (American as well) and have Phil ****ing Mickelson as the 5th most popular athlete in the world. What does absolutely nothing to convince me, however, is just to go by a countries population to arrive at popularity. Just because China and India have many inhabitants and badminton is played there, the sport isn't automatically popular. I'd venture to say badminton isn't the most popular sport in both these countries by a long shot. If it were, it would have huge domestic leagues that draw thousands of spectators each match and generate widespread tv coverage and thus: money. As far as I know, India is the only country where this is even remotely the case and they're still miles off sports like cricket. The problem is, corporations are not "generous". They're soulless entities with the sole purpose of making money and increasing their turnout over time. If they fork out the money for sponsorship, they expect to get it back with interest later, through increased market share, exposure, you name it. Yonex does not sponsor all the tournaments because they are nice people, but because they want to sell their stuff. Badminton in terms of revenue is worth next to nothing compared to other sports. And this is not a west-east thing. India and China have major corporations that could easily sponsor badminton to a much greater extent, but they don't; and there's a reason for that. I'd like for badminton to be more popular and for the athletes, who I think are among the best in the world (so much is required: speed, stamina, technique, intelligence, creativity, reactions), to be globally recognized, but I think the sport just isn't there yet. Even some of the major tournaments in Asia fail to sell out the venues (did you see Korea Open this year) and that's lamentable.
Hmm.. I saw the Alltime Superseries table standings the other weeks. Where was it missing? Wonder if anyone can post it again?
