Coming from a table tennis background I've noticed exactly the same thing with club players in both sports. The overwhelming majority of players, even those that play three or more times a week, don't watch international badminton whether online or live. Some may watch once in a blue moon, like when the Olympics or Commonwealth Games is on. Having said that, these players are obviously interested in watching games at the club of people of much lesser ability. I live in Australia, and yesterday I showed about ten players a picture of me with Gronya Somerville and asked if they knew who she was. Most didn't, and weren't familiar with the name even when I mentioned it. In a number of cases they said they don't watch international badminton. I went to the Sydney International recently, and despite there being a lot of people who play in Sydney and free admission there were hardly any spectators. I suspect most of the spectators were family. So why are so many people who enjoy watching club games disinterested in watching international badminton?
Maybe because the level of international pros is so far more advanced than their own that they don't think they can learn anything useful? Or maybe they're just not aware of BWF tournaments and youtube videos? Sent from my SM-G988W using Tapatalk
I only watch starting from QF & just on some special case like a top player lose to new name. Even so, as im working im not always watch. Then from my perspective, there is different between pros & non pros games. The pros had more technical which could be said as art of badminton which not many would understand it. Other hand non pros lv are more about drama, trickshot, & power show. Its somewhat more exciting & easier to enjoy than high class badminton art.
I would have thought you'd learn more from the pros! Lack of awareness of tournaments and videos is probably an issue in a lot of cases. But given I had a few people tell me they didn't watch it in the last Olympics and Commonwealth Games
I think that a lot of people need some link to the player to watch. If your country is not really represented in QF and above matches, less will watch. As Boris Becker and Steffi Graf were both top world players, both coming from germany, almost everyone watched tennis on TV in germany. Nowadays tennis is more or less a niche in germany compared to other sports (soccer .. ). If people are linked to some local players or a club, they might visit local tournaments more often and watch them playing.
I'm the UK there used to be a culture where when two guys met, an almost inevitable question was what football team do you support. I was never into football. (What Americans call soccer). Another sport there is some culture of watching is Tennis. In the past , the 1990s, there were 4 and later 5, television channels. They showed tennis and football. If you played tennis, you probably watched it too. Tennis players were household names. Federer is probably from the television era. I haven't watched tennis in a long time. I don't currently do Hulu or Netflix. People don't get into playing sports like table tennis or badminton as fans of watching the sport. There is no social pressure to either. It shouldn't be a surprise that people that play it typically aren't watching it. At a good level one might study it. A good question is why do people watch sport at all! If you watch 5 minutes of it you have seen it! Fortunately there are 2min or 5min clips, well edited. Maybe a lot of players have seen those? If not then they would watch it. So when you see people don't watch, there are levels of not watching. So what do you mean. If you showed them a brief clip, they'd watch.
I think it's the opposite of your first point. The players nowadays are underwhelming. Backtrack a decade or two ago, even my friends who don't play badminton know who lee chong wei, lin dan, fu haifeng and lee yong dae are. The players nowadays just do not shine as much as those legends anymore. Who in this generation do you think will be crowned as legend towards the peak or end of their career? Axelson? Momota? I think they are good but not exactly god-like.
I watch videos of pro players and eg one meant to showcase how great one of them is and often I'm thinking they could be talking about either of them. How is a non badminton player going to critique the quality of a person's play at that level?! They can see who is winning the points but beyond that?
I get where you are coming from, but there was a time when Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan were the hype of Badminton. Youtube will show compilation videos of their best plays and I guess even a beginner could see the difference between the quality of their matches compared to other players. How do I put it.. At their level, they made badminton look so easy that even a lay person can understand their play. I happen to come across this comment just when I was watching a video on Lee Chong Wei vs Axelson: Translation: "After Lee retired, watching badminton games lacked a taste that I don’t know how to describe. I used to pay attention to almost every badminton game. After watching this video, I found that I didn’t love chasing badminton games so much this year! Thank you for bringing me so many exciting badminton games for more than ten years, and you will always be the king of the court in my heart" I cannot stand in the position of a layperson because I had been playing badminton since young. But I can say for certain that some of my friends who do not have such background were religiously catching up with Lee Chong Wei's matches during the period of Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan's reign. It's a different type of badminton back then and I could feel the hype die down after these players left the scene. Most of my friends who were into badminton also lost interest after Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan's departure from the games.
