I don't know about tournaments here, but I believe that badminton isn't that popular where I live. Its mainly hockey, basketball and football I think...
In Canada, badminton is alright, its just not broadcasted or crazy like the hockey games. Bobbert if you want to know some tournements in CAnada, you can go to www.badmintonalberta.ca and check it out.
In the US, it's quite pitiful. It's estimated that there are at least 1.4 million people who play it here (at all levels), but most are unregistered, and I believe the majority (gotta be at least 70%, I'm guessing) are recreational players. The most badminton I had ever seen before junior high were these pitiful nets set up at parks and people trying to dink it around. The rallies typically lasted about 5 shots at most and the people were tickled pink if it reached 10 or more. Once I reached junior high, my view of badminton changed. We played it in PE, and while most were pitiful, I believe that in the tournament I played in (there was this recreational tournament at our school), there were some truly decent players, and one of them is actually on my team right now, and he has a very good chance of being team captain, even as a sophomore. We won Jamba Juice cards, btw, I finished second (I was terrible back then, all I had was a smash and a clear, I could hardly drop). Only until high school (last year) did I realize the true scope of the possibilities of badminton, and this was through watching the best members of the high school teams and some videos of some professionals. However, for the most part, people in our school still have that same dinky image of people in the park trying to keep the birdie in the air for longer than 5 seconds. When they see us around campus, practicing against a wall, carrying a badminton racket, practicing, it's merely an amusement to them, and only until they see one of the really good players (we don't really have any, but I mean the better ones we have) do they really understand why badminton is a sport and not a game. Sadly, few of them ever do see one of the better members. To add further to the loss, our team hasn't won a league championship since the early 1980's, and from 1994-2004 (11 years straight), we did not have A SINGLE WIN against any other school. We were terrible, and badminton, as a result, was mocked at our school. Only recently have we made recovery, winning two matches in 2005 and three last year. This year we hope to do better. But in the meanwhile, the US has relatively little interest in badminton. This, I think, is due to the little success we've had (Only Bach/Gunawan back in the 2005 World Championships), and we have little media coverage, few stores selling the equipment, few commercials promoting the sport, and we have too little business here in the States to get it up. Football, basketball, hockey, baseball, and maybe golf, are king. We also have a lot of other sports that we are a lot better at than badminton. We usually get a lot of medals in the Olympics, but nothing for badminton. That's what we need: A glorious victory.
yeah, some may even ask, badminwhat? im a singaporean, been studying in australia for the past 3years. Badminton still remains a mystery to many locals. Most players here are asian obviously. Hope they can put down their tennis rackets and take try to appreciate the beauty of badminton. rating of popularity: 1 of 10. u gona pay for cable tv to get to watch a tournament...poor thing.
in England badminton is not popular, nowbody knows who Lin Dan is! :crying: lol it's all about football, cricket and rugby
Posted on Sat, Aug. 09, 2008 Badminton is the football of China, making it one of the must-see events of the Olympics By JENNIFER FLOYD ENGEL McClatchy Newspapers BEIJING - When you really get down to it, what American Eva Lee and Canadian Anna Rice were doing was hitting 16 overlapping goose feathers embedded into a rounded cork base covered in thin leather back and forth. Or playing badminton, to be less technical. You remember the game your family sometimes played at backyard picnics with the net and plastic birdie and what looked like itty bitty tennis rackets, right? Well, it is an Olympic sport. And the Chinese fans who literally packed into Beijing University of Technology Saturday loved every single minute of action. Raucous cheering as well as ooh-ing and aah-ing were a constant backdrop while as many as three matches played simultaneously. Fans screamed for autographs afterwards. And a couple of them bumped and jumped to catch a wrist band Rice had thrown after an epic three-set victory. "In this county, you are proud to say you are a badminton player," Belarus badminton-er Olga Konon said. "Because people, if you say 'I am a badminton player', they say 'wow, cool', not like in my country or in Europe where it is not that popular." Badminton is their football, or at very least, their hockey. Bocog officials say tickets to table tennis and badminton went quicker than anything else, including basketball and gymnastics. "Many of us played the badminton in youth," Beijing resident Changai Sun explained with help of an interpreter before Saturday's games. "I played for four years and loved playing." Almost a Little League of badminton. Or Pee Wee Badminton. For anybody like me, who up until 12 hours ago had never seen a single badminton game that did not include grilled meats and adult beverages, let me try to explain this game at an Olympic level. Badminton is kind of like tennis - tennis with ADD. Matches go at a frenetic pace with that shuttlecock moving much faster than you'd guess looking at that little birdie. Where badminton and tennis really differ is that the lightness of the shuttlecock makes it almost impossible to judge where it is going to land. So players are constantly having to reach behind them and try to control this very aerodynamic birdie. The first one to 21 wins the set. Two sets win the match. They change sides after sets and midway through the third if there is one as was the case with Lee and Rice. They battled deep into a third set, a historic feat since Lee became the first American woman to win a set in singles at an Olympics. And Chinese fans appreciated that effort, showering them with a standing O. "It's nice to have so many people appreciate the sport," Lee said. "At the U.S. Open, even at our best, it was like 400 people." There were at least that many in the arena an hour beforehand, taking pictures and simply soaking in the atmosphere. Including 11-year-old Williams Wang from Shanghai. He lists badminton next to tennis, soccer and basketball as his favorite sports. And, of course, he also plays. He tried to explain to me why this sport has such a huge following in China. "It's fast. It's very fun. It takes lots of skill to play it well," Wang said. "And it's like tennis, it's very fair play." Yes, the Chinese are serious about their badminton. They claim credit for invention. They do pretty well. And they love to watch. Four years ago, in Athens, beach volleyball became the rage. Fans flocked to what were games within a party and a TV darling was born. Badminton has a chance to be that sport this Olympic year, a more subdued and clothed rage yet a rage nonetheless. While not as raucous as, say, a beach volleyball crowd - I saw no evidence of a wave or string bikinis - a badminton match has a very Chinese feel. Almost like eating Peking Duck or visiting The Great Wall. It is something you should do while in China. This is why Jim and Barrett Johnson decided to buy tickets. I bumped into the father and son from Dallas before Saturday's matches began. What are the odds, right? I had simply been interested in what interested them. "You would never see badminton in America," Barrett Johnson explained. "So we figured we might as well give it a shot." Me too. And I kind of like the tennis with ADD. Jennifer Floyd Engel: jenfloyd@star-telegram.com
Good find cooler. Tennis with ADD ... I like that image of badminton. Anything to sell it, especially in North America.
Not very popular among my people, Australians. Australians are more interested in football, which i find a very borning & painful sport to play. Soccer & basketball is alright, but many people at my school think of badminton as a picnic game which is nonsense.. unfortunately, tennis is more popular than badminton in Australia. Main reason why people aren't aware of badminton is because we are not good at it, other wise we would be on tv & stuff & everyone would play. Everyday i sww football on tv, & i always change the channel.. but we have a few good players & badminton is getting a little bit popular but still not a favourable sport here by most people.
I agree with you but it isn't as bad as table tennis. The are a lot of people who play badminton in Australia but badminton isn't advertised as much as other sports.
i have inserted my comment in red ----------------------------------------------------------------- Posted on Sun, Aug. 10, 2008 The bad boy of badminton? In Asia, this is serious stuff By MICHELLE KAUFMAN When most people think badminton, they think backyard picnic, plastic birdie, a couple of beers. But then, most people have never seen Olympic badminton players smash the shuttlecock at speeds of up to 200 mph. They have never mingled amongst sellout crowds in China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Denmark. They don't realize elite badminton players are very finicky about their equipment. That they insist on cork shuttles with 16 overlapping feathers from the left wing of a goose. Not the right wing. Only the left. (Something about the curvature of the left-side feathers and aerodynamics.) A tube of a dozen Yonex AeroSensa shuttlecocks goes for about $36. Lightweight graphite rackets can run as high as $800. (prolly a typo, 300 USD retail) Yes, Olympic badminton is serious stuff. And nobody is more serious about his sport than Lin Dan of China, the world's No. 1-ranked player and the guy who put the "bad" in badminton. The spiky-haired lefty is known as much for his on-court outbursts as his remarkable record. He disputes calls, breaks rackets, and reportedly punched a coach. The John McEnroe of badminton in one of the most recognizable Chinese athletes at the Olympics, behind only Yao Ming and hurdler Liu Xiang. "Super Dan" also happens to be dating the world's No. 1 women's player, Xie Xingfang. They have been a couple since 2004, and are rumored to be getting engaged after the Olympics. Together they have been nicknamed the 'Condor Couple', a reference to a popular Chinese novel about a bratty young warrior and his calmer, older lover. Lin and Xie are like the Brangelina of Chinese sports, their every move chronicled by the national media. They are under immense pressure to win. The Chinese have dominated badminton since the sport was added to the Olympic menu in 1992. They have won 22 medals and eight golds. Indonesia is next with 15 medals and five golds. Badminton tickets were among the first to sell out for these Olympics, and they probably could have sold plenty more if the Beijing University of Technology Gymnasium held more than 7,800 people. The atmosphere was electric during the first two days of competition, and players from non-badminton-loving countries got to feel like rock stars for a change. They get asked for autographs, and are hounded by fans who want their photos. "The crowd cheered me on as if I was a popular player," said Anna Rice of Canada. "It's really cool to be valued for what you are doing, and you can sense the appreciation. When you do a really difficult rally you know that they can appreciate it because a lot of them are players themselves. ... They know who you are. They value your sport." Eva Lee, a U.S. player from California, said she was "quite nervous" during her loss to Rice because she wasn't used to playing in front of a packed house. "The gym is a lot bigger than what I'm used to. The stage is bigger and there is a lot more anticipation and pressure." Badminton has been played for centuries in the Far East. A form of the sport called "Poona," was played in India, and British Army officials adopted the sport in the 1860s when they were stationed in India. Most of the best players still hail from Asian nations. All five U.S. players in Beijing are first- or second-generation Asian Americans whose families emigrated from Vietnam, Laos, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hong Kong. In addition to Lee, the U.S. team includes Howard Bach, Khan "Bob" Malaythong, Mesinee "May" Mangkalakiri, and Raju Rai. "The talent pool in Asia is amazingly large," Malaythong said in a recent interview. "They go after badminton all or nothing there and for every one player on a team, there are 1,000 players who didn't make it. I am not entirely sure that if I lived in Asia today if I would have made it to this level. Badminton is more than just a sport in Asia; it is a chance for a better life." In the U.S., it remains a niche sport and its epicenter is the Orange County Badminton Club in Southern California. All five U.S. players train there in a badminton-specific gym built by businessman Don Chew, a Thai immigrant whose daughter runs a restaurant out of the gymnasium. Crowds at matches there are typically in the hundreds. But in Asia, it's a different story. Fans here appreciate the world's fastest racket sport. A study was once done comparing badminton to tennis, and the results might surprise the average sports fan. A three-hour men's tennis match was compared with a one-and-a-half-hour badminton match. The tennis match had 299 rallies to 146 for badminton, but the badminton players traded 1,972 shots while the tennis players combined for 1,004 shots. The average shots per rally were 3.4 for tennis and 13.5 for badminton. The fastest serve ever recorded in men's tennis was 153 mph by Andy Roddick. And the fastest badminton smash was 206 mph by Fu Haifeng. In other words, save the plastic-skirted birdies for your picnics. It's time for goose feathers. (i think this is a typo too) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2008 Miami Herald Media Company http://www.miamiherald.com
Badminton in India As compared to many other countries, I think badminton enjoys relatively high popularity in India. The number of participants in local badminton tournaments is usually quite high, at least in the boys' and men's categories. These tournaments get quite a lot of coverage in local newspapers. Meanwhile, international tournaments do not get a lot of coverage at all. If an Indian progresses beyond the first round of a Super Series event, then the press starts showing interest in the tournament - although this interest subsides as soon as the Indian is knocked out. As a result, many Indians would know of Anup Sridhar and Saina Nehwal, but wouldn't have heard of Lin Dan! There are only 2 television channels that regularly show badminton. Cumulatively, one would get to see about 20 hours of badminton every month on Indian television, but not much live action.
im from the Philippines. and unlike Billiard or Boxing, our country doesnt have any representatives (than the Asuncions), yet, Badminton is sure leaps its progress here. haha. it seems,its here to stay. what if a pinoy badminton star soars to the world? haha=D I love Badminton because I love Badminton!
In Bangkok, Badminton is getting more popular as I can notice from a lot of new Badminton courts have been opened lately. Also in every Badminton courts, there are Badminton Teams playing everyday, and Badminton coaches teach many young and teen Badminton players. Nearby my home area (Pin-Klao Area in Bangkok), there are more than 10 Badminton courts located, so it's so good for me.
It scuks here in Quebec, Canada. There is almost no diffusion of badminton games on the TV. That is maybe because Canadian player can't overcome Asian player so they just don't show any matches of any kind of player.
Very interesting timing considering your post came one day after Anna Rice beat the Bitburger Open runner-up Mutatkar of India in Denmark. Your statement is obviously still true in general, however, and it will take more than a 1st round win by Rice to get badminton on TV. I understood that CBC (and presumably also SRC?) had comprehensive coverage of all courts via the Internet. I didn't have a Canadian IP address so I couldn't test the theory but I wonder how much it was used by Canadian badminton fans.
Here in Israel most of the people don't know what is badminton or they think it "the easy game with the strange ball" There is one store that sell badminton equipment. but at the last years the badminton grow up! (sorry about my bad english)
No-one knows who Lin Dan is? Where are you talking about? In my area (East midlands, UK), badminton is reasonably popular. My school has some fairly good players and my club has some decent talent too. Most of my friends could tell you who Lin Dan, Taufik Hidayat and Peter Gade are. Infact, they could probably give you more names than that. I would say that badminton is fairly popular where I am. Not as popular as football or cricket but probably more popular than rugby.
Here or from where i am from..Badminton is one of the most popular sport that's played by alot of ppl.Well,from the replies that i've read，it depends on which part of the country u're in.Different places can mean different sport sometimes..
here in new zealand it's not as popular as rugby or soccer/football... whenever asked what sport i play and i say badminton, they either laugh because they think it's a gay sport or they ask what it is. they think that badminton doesn't require any effort at all... pffft...
unfortunately in Australia most people dont even know what badminton is. Those who do tend to laugh at it claiming its not even a real sport. There is no Government funding in most parts except where the national squad trains and even then its barely recognised as funding/ support. There is a lack of coaching/training support. Basically if you are able to accell to the top in Aus badminton you have done well. If you then are able to progress into international competition you have done amazing. An australian on the world badminton map is quite unheard of though lol. I think our current mens singles champion whom i used to train with "Ashley Moss" now lives and plays in Denmark. Not too sure but i presume hes competing professionally now. Hes the best iv seen australia produce. Hopefully now im back into hard training i can get close to what he has achieved. But to put it bluntly, monopoly the board game is more popular than badminton in australia.
