Furious and livid. That is how I feel when I read of the latest BWF attempt to ruin badminton. Changing the scoring system when it is working perfectly? Hey, there are other parts of badminton which are broken, and the scoring system is not it. Stop trying to break it, and fix the broken parts instead. Grr… I am going to name 10 of the broken parts which warrant immediate action and I definitely want BWF to look at those instead.
Just so that I do not confused people as much as the BWF website confuses people, I will organize my thoughts into different themes:
A. Statistics and Fan Engagement
B. Distribution and Coverage of Matches
C. Accessibility of Tournaments for Players
D. Players Welfare and Marketing
A. Statistics and Fan Engagement
1. Livescore tracking of tournaments and matches across all tournament grades and geographies.
Tournaments in badminton are not tracked comprehensively. BWF tracks only the world tour turnaments, but none of the international tournaments where the players play for their countries in the Continental tournaments such as Badminton Asia are tracked. So, to the unknowing fan, they would be thinking there is a hiatus in badminton for that week. But that is not true. Some of our favourite players are still in action, it is just that BWF does not bother with tracking it. I need to go to 3rd party betting sites to figure out who is playing and where. This is a freaking shame.
BWF, take a page out of football and work with news agencies like the BBC to track it. Heck, it is not hard to track it. I actually wanted to build a Badminton Scores Tracking page on my website to track tournaments across the world. The main issue for me is the cost of purchasing the data from sports betting sites. I do not have the financial might to do that… yet. Just wait til I get more funding, it will happen!
It ain’t the scoring system! If we can’t find out where and when the matches are happening, we can’t watch them!
2. Players stats and historical records, head to heads, tournaments won, form, etc.
World Rankings are WAY more important for viewers than World Tour Rankings, and it sure as hell confuses me with how it is being presented. Imagine clicking on rankings and seeing Jason TEH as number 1. Dafuq????
When trying to search for player data such as head to head record between Momota and Axelsen, it is so freaking painful and the best source ironically is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is open sourced, so the legitimacy is a question mark. This is where we need BWF to buck up.
Again, this is not a difficult thing to do technically. We just need to clean up the data and build the right interface for fans to query. It too is something which I have in my mind for my website, but it will have to wait until I get more financial strength to pour into the website.
It ain’t the scoring system! If I can’t find the stats to view, I can’t get enticed enough to watch the matches!
B. Distribution and Coverage of Matches
3. TV channel restrictions of broadcasts by tournament, and filling the gaps with social media
This is so mindnumbing. The local cable TV only broadcasts Super 300 events from the Quarterfinals onwards and only for 1 court, but BWF restricts the entire tournament and all the courts from being shown on YouTube. This kind of leakages kills the popularity of the sport.
It ain’t the scoring system! It’s you guys not bloody showing the tournament when we wanna watch it! Wake up!
4. Grandness of the events – it looks cheap
The recent India Open Super 750 tournament look like Super 300 tournament. If the tournament looks cheap, people are not going to be bothered watching it. Some Super 750 tournaments like the China Masters are so grand. These are the type of tournaments which makes people want to watch!
It ain’t the scoring system! It’s the look of the tournament! If it looks cheap, who wanna watch that?!
5. Consistent Colour Grading across all venues
Some tournaments are a pain to watch, which others are a joy. Take a page out of The English Premier League for colour grading. Their colours are the most vibrant and best of all the football leagues in my opinion.
The US Open has terrible lighting and colour. The Hylo Open has a yellow tint to it. Indonesia Open and Indonesia Masters has contrasts which are too high. India Open did not warm up their colours by increasing the temperature when colour grading. I can go on. If the colours are off, people will switch the channel!
It ain’t the scoring system! If it looks off colour, people are turned off!
6. Quality of match commentators
There are only 2 world class match commentators in my humble opinion now and it is the peerless Jill Clarke and Steen Pedersen. They provide comments on the history of the tournament, the history of the players, the head to head record of the players, the favourite shots of the players, tactical knowledge of how the rallies are going, and even what the players are thinking! That is the absolute best in terms of sports commentary anywhere in the world, in any sport.
The rest of the commentators are really lacking in any of those areas mentioned above. We got a bunch of “captain obvious” commentators who do not know the technical shots which are being used in badminton. If you want to know what are the shots available, check out my website. There are significant differences between a slice, a smash and a fast drop. I get pretty angsty when a player does a reverse slice to get a point and the commentator keeps quiet for a whole 5 seconds before finally saying “So and so got a point from the smash”.
It ain’t the scoring system! Bad commentary puts viewers off and they switch channels!
C. Accessibility of Tournaments for Players
7. Opening up entry into BWF tournaments and moving away from gatekeepers who hold all the power
All BWF world tour tournaments needs to go through the Badminton Association of each country. If the Badminton Association holds absolute power, then it limits the amount of aspirational players who can participate in these tournaments. That reduces the amount of future players, and in turn, reduces the popularity through the reduction of participation.
If the governing bodies were to be reduced to just providing administrative services for players in order for them to participate, this opens it up to more players who can join. This will open up more interest, and additional levels of tournaments for player to try and qualify for the world tour. This helps promote participation and increases the popularity.
It ain’t the scoring system! If more people can participate, that would translate to more people watching!
8. Opening up entry into Junior tournaments instead of going through gatekeepers only
Junior tournaments suffer the same problem as the senior tournaments. The governing bodies, at least in Malaysia, create Closed Tournaments only for Junior Players within their teams to participate. There is no way for the public to sign up for high level junior tournaments. It must go through the governing body.
It ain’t the scoring system. If there are no grassroots level involvement, there will be less people watching it when they grow up!
D. Players Welfare and Marketing
9. Injury treatment during a match
This is probably the dumbest rule I have ever seen in the history of sports. If a player is injured with a serious and perhaps life threatening injury, still no treatment is allowed? Where is the logic of this? If there are fears of cheating, then have the tournament referee present and make a call. If the thing is not serious, the referee can get the player to continue.
It ain’t the scoring system! If you can’t take care of the most valuable asset of the sport: your players, you will have nothing for people to watch very soon!
10. Marketing of player head to head matchups, rivalries.
There are absolutely no marketing of the players with their head to head records. In football, we used to have Messi vs Ronaldo. It was hyped up like crazy during the World Cup. The Spanish La Liga also hypes up the Classico between Real Madrid and Barcelona. Or Manchester United vs Arsenal of old?
Tennis used to have Nadal vs Federer, which were always absolute classics! But heck, badminton has NOTHING. What we get a lame duck articles on BWF, and pretty bad interviews of players which are badly edited. Gosh. It is just so bad, I don’t watch any of it. It is just too boring.
It ain’t the scoring system. Your marketing and match buildup are just so bad that people can’t get excited enough to watch the matches!
That’s all for this entry.
Until the next update, eat well, get plenty of rest, and keep the badminton going!
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