Oh right, for some reason I thought serve priority was only in doubles. That's true, it was both. Yeah, that was bad. Games went on forever sometimes.
#'s? no. i'm not documenting it. my data is based solely on watching over 250,000 matches (live & downloaded) of all levels (elite jr's to olympics). it's obvious to anyone who watches badminton regularly that there needs to be a 'clock' in between points. for the sports without a defined time limit, like tennis & baseball (2015), it's 20 seconds. your point is taken, however, no new high tech equipment is nec'y during the testing period. the umpire uses a stopwatch, at the 15 second mark the umpire gives a 5 second warning. they already give a 20 second warning at intervals, and those count down times are not displayed anywhere except the umpire chair. simple, eh? you can test at all levels without technical interruption. i know right now bwf is enamored with that theory. however, the goal of having more 'suspenseful points' is a misplaced goal. you cannot control close games &/or blowouts no matter what the scoring system is. competition is subject to natural selection. what spectators want, in other words: 'for the fans', is total bullshit. the first clue is, figuratively, there are no fans at lower tier tournaments. players will have no problem adapting especially if it means a lot more $. remember, that's the whole point. you haven't convinced me. "dear athletes, we are going to reduce the length of your games by 25%... however, the prize money will eventually triple. is that ok with you?" many times the powers that be (*cough cough* bwf *cough cough*) make things more complicated than they need to be.
That is indeed an impressive number (how old are you? Even if you're in your 50s, that's basically a full-time job!). But don't you see huge difference at various levels? Just grabbing the data I have at hand, in the German Bundesliga, average length between points is about 18-20 seconds, with the fault to serve duration serve of about 10s-15s. If the system were added, as an umpire, I'd want most certainly have an integrated clock in the umpire panel. If we had to reset and start a stopwatch after every rally, that would mean serious troubles at the lower levels. But a game that has reached 20:20 (or 10:10) is usually close, isn't it? So why not extend it a little bit? Yes, but you are assuming here that The number of viewers strongly correlates with the scoring system. For reference, how do you compare the pre-2006, 3x11_15, 3x21_30 and the 5x11_15 system? All of these have been played in various tournaments, so shouldn't we see different levels of viewership if we compare attendance / TV popularity of the tournaments playing with these systems? Your suggested scoring system is most popular with viewers. You seem to have expertise in the area of TV marketing and seem quite convinced of your opinion. Other people, including those in BWF, do too, and don't seem to share your opinion. So can you elaborate how you got to your preference of 3x15_15 instead of, say, 3x_14_17, 3x21_21, or 5x11_15?
it doesn't take long to reach that #. i've directed and attended many tournaments. you don't need to watch one individual match to know who the fast players are and who the slow players are during the 155-250 matches. especially watching downloaded tournaments... how many times do i have to hit the '10 second skip' key between points? how many players require more than 2 hits (20 seconds)? the higher level players, within a tournament, tend to play slower in the later rounds. especially when it gets to the semi's and finals... which would be the televised matches. what's the avg. length of those matches? i can understand the need for an integrated clock, but i'm curious... what are your hands doing while you are umpiring? if it's too much to handle for the chair umpire, would it be too much responsibility for the service judge/umpire to become the timer? i haven't umpired in awhile but i have used the live score while in the chair, and, well, it's nowhere close to overwhelming. i have nothing against extra points. i used 3x15_15 earlier as an example, not a definitive solution. if the 5 finals matches take an avg. of 5 hours (300 minutes) to play, and you want to get it down to 3.5 hours (210 minutes), 30% less, does it make sense to reduce the games by 30%? that means 3x15_21. does that make sense as a starting point for experimenting? i don't feel the need to over complicate matters. past experiments failed: 5x9, or whatever it was. there was no monetary incentive for teams to support the change. what are we talking about here? what should the new scoring system be? where should it be tested? whatever the decision is it needs to be tested soon at the highest level because those are the ones to be televised. tournaments run differently, players behave differently, other unforeseen operational issues will pop up and need to be addressed and considered that don't happen at lower tier tournaments. should bwf care more about what the superseries level athletes think or more about what future & challenger series athletes think? i think continental championships are a great testing ground.
Most are between 10 and 30 minutes, plus about 3-4 minutes for toss+warmup (official warmup time is 120s). That's using 5x11_15, the current BWF experiment I. At very low levels, my left hand is holding the scoresheet, and my right hand is holding the pen. My other right hand is showing In. My other other right hand is allowing the player to towel down/change shuttle. But then again, at least with regional (or even) youth players, my problem is usually finishing the score announcement before the shuttle is in play again, with no delay. At higher levels, the main problem is not so much the handling of the stopwatch - you have much more time between rallies, you sit comfortably on a chair, and the electronic system is way faster than paper, especially in doubles. Instead, it is the possible distraction. But that's a very minor quibble. I for one like your idea and will implement it in [my umpire panel](https://aufschlagwechsel.de/bup/). 5x7 and 5x9 have been tested some time ago. Currently, BWF is experimenting with 5x11_15 (and some crazy 5x11/13 which gets counted differently, but I don't think any tournament ever played that). Do you think 5x11_15 has failed? Weren't the commercial leagues (NBL and PBL) the first to use it, even before BWF started the experiment? Both! The current experiment was conducted up to Grand Prix level. Do you feel that's still too low?
failed? no. a success? no. i don't think the leagues are a 'real world' testing ground. the league's are used to stay in shape, have fun and make a little money. the athletes have nothing to lose. if they play bad it doesn't affect their world ranking or status on their nat'l team. the athletes do not play with intensity, with a need to survive. yes. it needs to be gp gold & above. the reason bwf capped it at gp is because they know the difference between a gp & a gp gold tournament is major in terms of how it's run and who plays in them. i still maintain the best testing grounds are team events: continental championships, thomas/uber, sudirman. there's less incentive for an individual to complain, or give up, because you must put aside your attitude for the sake of the team.
... slow players are the major causes of long games It is my experience that slow players are caused by the umpire. The players will do whatever the umpire permits them to do, and spectators see all the cross court tours that the umpire permits the player at end of each rally. Continuous play is already written in the law. Anyone here care to take a gander on how much the shuttle-in-play-time is, lets say in a women's singles going the distance, like 21-19, 19-21, 21-19? Lets consider a 60 minute match. This includes the full intervals taken by players (total 7' dead-time already, right?). Shuttle-change requests galore with no contest, a mop now and then, quick towelling off here and there. If you came up with one sixth of the time, then you are an optimist. One could argue, well, that is still 2 points per minute. And that is just dandy. Allow me to share some of my findings, below is part of a large db; these were from a finals day at a grandprixgold event concluded not too long ago. Event gameTime inPlay %inPlay WD 0:29:21 0:08:13 28.00% MD 0:39:01 0:07:58 20.42% XD 0:22:28 0:05:05 22.63% MS 0:30:00 0:05:47 19.28% WS 0:58:06 0:08:46 15.09% So in the WS match, the spectators saw about 9 minutes of shuttle moving, and 50 minutes of players touring the court, changing shuttle, quick towelling, etc etc all etc that is not badminton. With a 20" permission after each rally, this will translate to 40' of nothing. Imagine if that match was a serve-volley affair. Spectators should actually be paid to watch such inaction.
Thats some very interesting data! And certainly there must be take care of the inactive time of some players. I would like to have these data from tennis as this strikes me as the sport with the most pauses and less active time. Still very popular! Also I want to note a thing that I think often about but have never read about: All the time problems only come up because somehow it is set into stone (seemingly?!) that all 5 disciplines have to be played and shown. So for some people now the solution is to make games quicker and quicker to get through all 5 disciplines? Very bad idea imho! I think its a mutual problem in badminton that all 5 disciplines are sort of equal and bound together. Maybe it would be a good idea to seperate it to some degree. I hate the trend of cutting the playing time more and more (although in a very few years I will be the old one on the court and it might help me lol). I dont know if I would want to seperate anything...maybe not. But for TV time it would certainly be better to seperate the disciplines instead of making it 5 quickies!! I have tested the new pointsystem (best of 5 to 11_15) only once. I like the 5-set thing. But it felt very fast i gotta say. Must find people to play these counting more to get a better impression.
separating would be more expensive for everybody involved. will advertisers pay for an extra day advertising? teams will have to pay for an extra day of travel and all the costs associated with it. tournament organizers will have to pay for an extra day of expenses for officials. tournament organizers will have to pay for an extra day of venue rental. tournament organizers will have to pay for an extra day of the broadcast team. will fans want to pay for an extra day of admission, or will they opt out of 1 of the days? if attendance is split, but expenses go up for the extra day, well, you do the math. how would you split it up? singles one day, doubles the next? singles & mixed one day, md/wd the next? if there was more money in badminton this wouldn't be a problem, but, there isn't. unfortunately, shortening the games to fit tv is a nec'y evil. separating matches only works in the olympics. teams spare no expense for glory, sponsors pay top dollar to be a part of it, fans pay anything to see it.
there are very good reasons for why the things are done how they are done these days (and as a badminton fan, I actually am very happy as it is, because I can pretty much choose the games I want, when I want to watch on youtube, and of course from a sportsperspective I wanna have all disciplines equal) i have no solutions for this obviously as i am not smarter/less insider than the people in charge But I think it is negative for promotion and TV when games get shorter and shorter to press all disciplines into the limited schedule. But to play out 5 disciplines in 6 days(?) in 1 venue is of course a challenge. If BWF thinks to make the game "better" (more viewers and more TV money) by making games shorter and shorter (as it seems to me) they are on the completely wrong way imho! Thats my mainpoint. (so maybe one should think about what could be possible to get out of the limiting frame, i.e. splitting disciplines somehow)
Note that when it comes to spectators and TV, only the quarterfinals and onwards are relevant. The venue is also not the problem; the O35+ tournaments regularly play the first rounds at 2 or 3 venues. The rare commodity is viewer attention. You could make the finals be on different days (like the Olympics did), but then you need more than one weekend (weekdays, except for maybe Friday, do not see that much attention). Thus, you'd effectively half the number of tournaments in the schedule. Which tournaments do you want to abolich?
Well Badminton wont aquire more attention through changing the scoring system (more sets are actually a good thing, but not if the games become too short). Thats the one thing i am convinced of.
scheduling wouldn't be a major problem for bwf, but it would be a problem for the teams. splitting the finals day means bwf couldn't schedule 2 ss tournaments back to back, or a ss-gpg back to back, or a gp-gpg back to back. bwf tries to schedule tournaments in the same general area in consecutive weeks to make it easier/cheaper for team's to traveling; german gpg/all england ss, malaysia ss/singapore ss, indonesia ss/australia ss, canada gp/usa gpg, etc... scheduling a gp at the same time as an ss. or a gpg the same time as an ic isn't a problem since the participants aren't the same. the # of ss + gpg tournaments only total 26, so though it could be done it woudn't be ideal.
your opinion is that of an avid badminton fan, and i'm sure it's the same as most people on this forum, including myself. do not shorten our great game! however, it's apparent we, the current worldwide fan base, is not enough to $upport and grow the sport to the level we'd like to see it worldwide. i'd like to see the stars make way more money and be able to play freely without being owned by their federation. but that won't happen until there's a lot more money available. to that end we need tv. now, the 'new casual fans' tv will attract will not care about what the scoring used to be. sad, but true. changing the scoring system is a nec'y evil at this point in time. the thought of splitting up finals into 2 days, thus having to spread out the schedule of the tournaments, thereby making it more expensive for teams to exist is a worse alternative.
So since you seem to have a lot of insight and actually do some serious work in the badminton professional world may I ask: Whats the reason for the scoring change? what does BWF want to achieve with it? Making timescheduling "easier" / and better to fit into TV?! (games shorter) or make the game more attractive?
isn't it obvious? to make the game more attractive for tv scheduling. the players like the current scoring system. long time badminton fans like the scoring system. if those were the only 2 factors that mattered there would be no reason for change. the nfl & mlb are always looking into reducing the length of their games for tv coverage. google the rule changes being discussed this year. those are multi-billion dollar sports entities. with all of their profits you'd think they wouldn't have to, or want to, change anything. but you have to ask yourself: "why do they have all that $?" answer: tv. tv revenue is the reason the nba/nfl/mlb expanded to their current number of teams. do you think the answer is any different for other countries or sports? so, now you know why tv is so influential in sports. you don't necessarily need professional insight to any specific sport. it's all about where the money comes from.
The US Football is played as 2x15' quarters, right? How long is the coverage on telly? About 3h plus. It is the way the broadcast is setup, provides plenty of inserts, and the pre- and post- shows. Tennis is therefore similar appeal for the telly chaps; lots of stoppages. [Not to mention, the players sit in chairs after the first game!!] The match is played on 3 levels - rally, game, and set. Golf is another sport that is telly-friendly, it is 4-some, and plenty of them, each starting at different stages (holes), and then after each stroke. Cricket the same; every end of over is a stoppage, then there is the drinks break, ball-change break, decision reviews. All these have natural and contrived stoppages where the sponsors and advertisers have their 87 edits in 29 seconds or whatevah. If badminton is to go with telly coverage, and this is probably the PanAm and to some extent BE and Oceania confederations, then it is better to follow the football (the spherical ball kind) model of coverage. This is also continuous play model. BWF needs a proper BD (business development) chap to undertake the approach. Even today, badminton is the 2nd most popular spectator sport in the world, thanks to the Asian contribution. BWF's live streaming is a good lead, now that most of the people have access to the internet. Now on to the next stage of the business model - betting. Just imagine the possibilities; I have a whole set of potential bets, right from which side the player will choose, which shot will end rally, to when will this player ask for a shuttle change, a decision review, on which line, and we will not even consider the umpiring muckups yet. I have a db of the outcomes of the rally succeeding long ones, but hush, this is for umpire and line judge training.
4 x 15' 3.5h+ the time it takes to telecast a game is a lot shorter than finals day of a tournament. but that hasn't translated into a lot of money. there is betting, which serves as an income stream for bwf.
Actually what is not considered in a lot of the discussion is that the large factor here is not just the TV compatibility of the scoring system, but rather the prominence and popularity of badminton in high-income countries, because that's where money comes from. And would you look at that - it's not popular in North America, or large parts of Europe, and few people know that it is a very competitive sport in the first place. How do you change that? One problem is the sport's perception. To better showcase the demands and spectacular elements of the sport, the TV broadcasts need to be better quality (more different angles and slow-motions). Also, you need to introduce people to the sport - if they haven't experienced it, they'll be unlikely to give a damn about it. For that, you'll have to try and get it into school's curriculums if possible, for that will lead to maximum exposure in that sense. Next, how to to make the TV format more attractive - well, apart from making the broadcast itself better (not very expensive in the large sense, doesn't take a huge crew and there'd only have to be one, following the Superseries or Level 1-3 circuit), you could split Finals (all 3 doubles disciplines one day, singles another), or you could do a 2 court conference. Also, for the love of god, make the freaking matches available on the internet. Doesn't have to be free, you can even do a season pass program like the NFL, but for me as a German fan, it's ultra-frustrating to not be able to see decent quality footage on any official channel for at least 4 weeks after the event. Sometimes even more than 3 months. And while there may be a conflict with sold TV rights, selling TV rights if they're not going to be used is just utterly stupid. Those are just very rough ideas, but coming from table tennis, where they changed from 21p/bo3 to 11p/bo5, I can say that it's certainly a lot more frustrating to play the 2nd system and luck get's rewarded much much more, and badminton's net cords are more common than in table tennis, which - by my guess - will make this system more random, and thus unenjoyable. That's impossible. Assuming 8 hours a day, 45 minutes a match, that would take over 64 years without any breaks. Even assuming you skip pauses between rallies religiously that'd still amount to over 32 years. It's a great number, but it's not possible for you to have actually watched that many matches.
