IBF's Marketing Partner

Loh

Loh

Regular Member
We have discussed quite a bit in the past about IBF's lack of marketing efforts, capabilities, etc, but now IBF has found a professional company to take care of this department for all major IBF events from 2006. Hopefully, with this arrangement IBF can concentrate on other no less important matters.

As reported in World Badminton on Oct 12, 2005, IBF has teamed up with Total Sports Asia (TSA) to handle media rights in Asia-Pacific and Middle East. This arrangement is supposed to provide the IBF with a solid financial structure, but no figures were given.

The link is as follows:

http://www.intbadfed.org/Portal/desktopdefault.aspx?tabid=10&ItemID=1866
 
Loh said:
As reported in World Badminton on Oct 12, 2005, IBF has teamed up with Total Sports Asia (TSA) to handle media rights in Asia-Pacific and Middle East. This arrangement is supposed to provide the IBF with a solid financial structure, but no figures were given.

http://www.intbadfed.org/Portal/desktopdefault.aspx?tabid=10&ItemID=1866
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I can't quite follow the logic of the finnacial structure part either. Maybe a case of selective reporting?
 
Cheung said:
I can't quite follow the logic of the finnacial structure part either. Maybe a case of selective reporting?
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Maybe the IBF should be more transparent and give us more details. I've not heard of TSA and wonder how good they are. In a way, the IBF is perhaps testing TSA as its coverage is limited to the Middle-East and Asia-Pacific. I hope the IBF has got a more proven company (or companies) for the Americas and Europe, decidedly the richer hunting grounds, but not really tested unlike Asia.
 
It could be a way of saying,

"Other more well known marketing companies are way too expensive. This one is more limited to our geographical regions and comes at considerably cheaper expenses. Therefore, we are less likely to be bankrupt..." (i could have added more but better stop there!:D
 
One concern though TSA only covers part of the globe, Africa, Europe, North and South Americas are left out of the scope.
 
with the limited information available, we should still consider this as a positive development in badminton promotion.

if anything, TSA should have more competence in marketing, an area where IBF has historically been lacking. afterall, most of the officials inside IBF are ex-badminton players who by profession are not trained in that area. an injection of profession marketing skills will hopefully package badminton into a more presentable state.

get some better commentators, better scoring presentation, better camera angles, better TV editing. these are places where badminton on TV should be improved. instead of those wild ideas like changing the scoring, courts size/lines, service which imho does little to improve badminton but instead make things even more confusing.

in a couple of years, if TSA do show the ability to market and really make badminton shine, i suggest the deal should extend beyond just the major IBF events. all IBF sactioned Grand Prix tournaments should be handed over to a single organization. this includes the planning, coordination (with local official), branding, marketing, sponsorship. this way, the quality of badminton tournament organization will be more uniform. unlike today where some tournaments are very well run while some are so poor they don't even have a decent website.
 
kwun said:
with the limited information available, we should still consider this as a positive development in badminton promotion.

if anything, TSA should have more competence in marketing, an area where IBF has historically been lacking. afterall, most of the officials inside IBF are ex-badminton players who by profession are not trained in that area. an injection of profession marketing skills will hopefully package badminton into a more presentable state.

get some better commentators, better scoring presentation, better camera angles, better TV editing. these are places where badminton on TV should be improved. instead of those wild ideas like changing the scoring, courts size/lines, service which imho does little to improve badminton but instead make things even more confusing.

in a couple of years, if TSA do show the ability to market and really make badminton shine, i suggest the deal should extend beyond just the major IBF events. all IBF sactioned Grand Prix tournaments should be handed over to a single organization. this includes the planning, coordination (with local official), branding, marketing, sponsorship. this way, the quality of badminton tournament organization will be more uniform. unlike today where some tournaments are very well run while some are so poor they don't even have a decent website.
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i totally agree. its a start in the right direction of the addition of business to badminton which is ultimately the goal. Pro sports everywhere else are much more business oriented
 
I would have thought that event sponsorship would be a very attractive prospect for large western firms at the moment who wish to advertise themselves to the emergent and very lucrative Chinese market. This is a great opertunity to increase financial investment in the sport which in turn will attract media coverage and heighten the global market.
 
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]The dynamic sport of badminton is played by an estimated 225 million people worldwide and unfailingly packs arenas and increases TV ratings wherever it is shown, especially in Asia. For example at the Athens 2004 Olympics, badminton rose an incredible 14 places amongst the most popular televised sports from the Sydney 2000 Games, to now make it one of the most watched sports at the Olympics. To further illustrate this phenomenon, the Thomas and Uber Cups in 2002 were watched by well over 1 billion people! [/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Behind this resurgence in the sports’ popularity, is the IBF, who are probably one of the most progressive and forward thinking federations in world sport. They readily acknowledge the importance of television as the main driving force in increasing participation levels, and are now in the process of revolutionizing the sport to better suit the ever growing TV audience. [/FONT][FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Innovations to make the sport more “TV friendly” include a new scoring system to shorten matches, changing the position of the service line, electronic line-calling, contemporary on-screen graphics and stats, providing on-court entertainment between matches and actively promoting the players’ image and attire. [/FONT]
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take from tsa's website. Definately sells badminton in my mind.
 
Eurasian =--(O) said:
take from tsa's website. Definately sells badminton in my mind.
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I'm not so sure. This is just barely clever use of rhetoric to disguise some very mundane moves by the IBF. Rally points hardly revolutionize the game. They make games shorter and less nail-biting. We've been over this ground before. If I'm not mistaken, "promoting players' image and attire" refers to Punch's wish that the women dress like Sharapova. What else have they "promoted" in this regard?

If they're just being paid to find inventive ways of lauding the slapdash efforts of the IBF, they aren't going to help much. They may yet come up with some real ideas, though. Let's wait and see.
 
Yeah, I agree with event - it's written to make it sound exciting, but the scoring system and court size and lines aren't things that are going to make it more TV friendly in my opinion. The matches in the new scoring system seem dissapointingly short... As far as attire goes, I've talked to a number of girls who dont mind that the sport is moving towards tennis stars' attire.

event said:
I'm not so sure. This is just barely clever use of rhetoric to disguise some very mundane moves by the IBF. Rally points hardly revolutionize the game. They make games shorter and less nail-biting. We've been over this ground before. If I'm not mistaken, "promoting players' image and attire" refers to Punch's wish that the women dress like Sharapova. What else have they "promoted" in this regard?

If they're just being paid to find inventive ways of lauding the slapdash efforts of the IBF, they aren't going to help much. They may yet come up with some real ideas, though. Let's wait and see.
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8-ball pool in the UK has been going through the same thing over the last few years with changes being made to rules, tables etc to try and make the sport more exciting to the viewing public. After much discussion and a number of unsuccessful changes the general concensus amongst players was that in order for a sport to successfully attract a neutral TV audience (people not associated to the sport) it had to be easy to follow, reasonably fast paced, have an element of unpredictability and have players whom the viewing public could relate to.
Badminton is fast paced, has a fairly easy to understand rule set, has the element of unpredictability (under the old rule set) and has the players who, if promoted properly, could gain an affinity with the audience. Magazine and newspaper profiles of the players would build familiarity with both the players themselves and the sport in general. The key to success though would be to increase investment in the sport from sponsors, raising event prizemoney would attract television coverage and encourage players from more countries to turn professional.
 
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