A pity badminton will never get the wide recognition and audiences that has tennis. Why is this? Tennis is mostly played outdoors in summer, badminon is in halls during winter. Tennis is played with a ball on a larger court and is slower, more easy to watch and enjoy the points and scoring system. I do not see badminton matching tennis for enjoyment. The way the sets and scoring works is more interesting and the server has an advantage. What is the advantage to serve in badminton? I see hardly any. So the way badminton works in scoring is very simple, first to 21. Tennis has best of 3 or 5 sets plus tiebreak. I do not see badminton ever rivalling tennis for wide spectator appeal. Maybe more people play badminon but tennis has the audiences, the prestige and the money.
You have to go back into history. There used to be two world bodies for badminton fighting for control Eventually they got together but tennis had at least a ten year head start over professional badminton. Tennis had better marketing and personalities so world wide appeal was greater. Let's face it, the world was a different place back in the 70's, 80's and 90's - top players who were Asian didn't have the English language skills and style to attract the money. And marketing people in world badminton kept concentrating on promoting the world's fastest racquet sport which actually got nowhere
Yeah, I agree with Cheung. Tennis is not more "watchable" or has a "server advantage" which makes it more attractive to people. It's all about the marketing. And now that Asian countries dominate there is a bit of old fashioned racism keeping it unattractive in western countries.
Yes tennis does have server advantage! Have you watched it? You can serve to centre line or wide and make an ace, In badmiton is not so easy to frequently score from service. Yes also tennis is more watchable and that is why is has huge audiences across the world with many prominent tournaments followed. Badminton is faster and maybe that is part of the problem being too fast and quick to be fully appreciated? Funny you say racism. I cannot see it. I think it more a problem with the sport itself and specially the dull scoring system. Needs livening up.
I mean that audiences don't care about the server advantage. People don't watch badminton and say "cool sport, but I don't like how the server has no advantage so I'm never going to watch this again." Tennis has better marketing, period. The average person in the western world knows what "Wimbledon" is and many have seen it at least once, even those that have no idea how to play tennis and don't like watching it. Most people can also name one or more tennis players (like Serena Williams or John McEnroe) even if they have never seen a tennis game. Tennis players go beyond tennis into the mainstream celebrity culture. Meanwhile I, as an american, didn't even know that badminton was a real sport that could be played professionally, much less one that was played in the Olympics. I had never seen a badminton match in my life, despite having sports on the TV during my childhood and even when I started playing in China I didn't know there were coaches or amateur leagues. I honestly just thought it was something you do with friends, not a real sport. I know I was very stupid about that, but I'm an educated person and an avid consumer of culture. In 40 years on my life I had never come across badminton in any context other than kids playing in the backyard. And now that I am a bridge of sorts between the west and Asia when it comes to badminton, racism is definitely a part of it. Many westerners (who don't know badminton at all) call it "weak tennis" or "it's an Asian ball game, so it's easy." I hear those sentiments often and regularly. Badminton needs a dose of good old fashioned capitalism. People need to walk into a Nike store and see Lin Dan on a shirt, or badminton shoes need to be cool in the way that basketball shoes are sold to millions to people who never play basketball. Much of a sports mainstream popularity has to do with marketing over the actual game and how the game is played. A few stand out personalities would help as well.
In tennis, I take a flashback to the 70s or early 80s. The U.S. pretty much dominated the tennis world because so many players who won the Grand Slam are Americans. But then in the middle-to-late 80s and 90s, countries like Germany, Sweden, Czech Republic, Yugoslavia, former Soviet Union countries, Argentina, Brazil, France, and others can keep up with the tennis popularity and win Slams. And then nowadays, 83% of the tennis players in a grand slam are non-Americans and for the last 13 years, only 3 American players winning Slams in singles. Things do the opposite for badminton. In the 70s and 80s, Denmark, Sweden, England were the Western nations that could dominate the world of badminton and could compete with the Indonesians and Japanese. But as the Chinese and South Koreans took over and won loads of badminton titles, it left Denmark as the only Western country that still produced quality players. Then we have Indian players that can compete with other Asian players. This leaves the question: did Europeans really make tennis a global sport? Why did the amount of European badminton players diminish in the 90s and 2000s, but the European tennis players escalate during the 90s and 2000s? The answer is, of course, capitalism. U.S. is the center of a huge marketing power and able to market tennis to any other countries by inserting interesting features for the players such as the head-to-head, clothes, personality, sponsors. The other European countries can follow what the U.S. does for their tennis tournaments. So even though there are fewer American players right now than in the past, U.S. still can observe other non-American players. As for badminton, why can't Denmark promote badminton in the West just like U.S.? The answer is that nowadays Asia is the huge marketing power for badminton. Denmark doesn't have the level of marketing power just like U.S. does. All they need to do is to train more players to be talented like the Asian players. But for the marketing, Denmark has to accept what the Asians need to offer. That's why we don't see Western badminton players that are marketed in sport stores. Even though Denmark is the only Western country where badminton is more popular than tennis, but tennis has bigger marketing and bigger promotion. Caroline Wozniacki, Danish female tennis player, is much more popular in the West than Viktor Axelsen and any other Danish badminton players. Another problem is that badminton in the West is still considered a sport that is famous for being played at the backyard. If you ask these people that badminton can be played professionally, they'll be surprised and seem not to care. They don't seem to know Lin Dan, LCW, Viktor Axelsen, Taufik, Peter Gade, etc. They will probably be aware if there's someone from the West who can create a rivalry just like the Big 4 (Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray) in tennis. But trust me: if Axelsen was rivaled by another non-Danish Western guy and both made consistent results, they'll become stars just like Federer and Nadal in tennis.
