again, u sound naive and not in tune with reality.
1. peter gade is a proprietory property, any joe blow clubs can't (legally) use his image for advertisement without compensation.
2. football/basketball aren't free. U naively keep linking free or cheap sports to popularity of that sport. I already gave u many expensive sport are more popular than badminton. If u see people playing tag football or street basketball, then badminton is free too, it's call back yard badminton. Better yet, go to the park and play badminton with the footballers. U seem to want indoor courts with lines, high ceiling, good floors, good light, for free or else no badminton starters want to try badminton. There are plenty real examples that counter your argument. There are many more less well off youngsters in SE Asia and china but yet how come these countries have the best badminton pros? Their starters don't even complain playing with no shoes, steel racket and yet u whine and whine.
3. u r whining because u see less and less low cost community and public gyms available while the private clubs expand. Do u know why? it's call wake up and smell the coffee. YOUR GOVERNMENT IS BROKE and IN DEBT, FEDERAL, STATE AND MUNICIPAL LEVELS. Those subsidized public facilities have to raise prices too or cancel session because they are getting less dough from the Terminator. U should thanks the private investors running those private clubs or else badminton in the US will goes downhill for sure. U r bashing things that are actually giving badminton a leg up.
4. There were lots of cheap low costs facility in the US in the 70, 80, 90's . So where were your international grade american badminton players?
Why badminton popularity gotten worst and worst? where are those starters?
1. Already addressed earlier in the other post.
2. Your logic and analogy are entirely flawed and irrelevant. I'm not talking about tag football or street basketball. And as far as I and anyone else can see, tennis, basketball, and football don't change nearly as much with wind resistance and require a special facility to play the sport in the (near) EQUIVALENT spirit/caliber that badminton requires indoor gyms for. And I'm not talking about simply TRYING badminton. The initial experience itself is what will keep people playing the sport more than once. If people don't keep playing badminton after the first try, do you think it's really fun for them?
Why do people in China keep playing even in such poor conditions and equipments? Because they understand how the game is supposed to be played because there is plenty of media coverage in China to show what badminton is actually supposed to/can be like, while us U.S. folks here have basketball coaches at high school levels trying to teach badminton with smashes at our drop speeds...while private investors and qualified coaches keep their heads in the ground milking money from us rich existing badminton-enthusiasts.
You can achieve very high levels of play for tennis, basketball, and football in existing environments, but you cannot easily do the same for badminton without a proper paid indoor gym - and that's what separates badminton from those sports in terms of economic attractiveness.
Thus, entry level into and experience of badminton are drastically affected by such conditions; and in all fairness, it is then indeed valid to draw an analogy to say that football, tennis, and basketball are practically free compared to badminton when equipments of equal value are provided already.
3. Whining? So far I've given you nothing but thorough explanations and counterarguments against your half-ass backed up claims and put downs that seem to totally ignore what I'm trying to say. If indeed you say you have many valid counterarguments, why don't you actually enlighten us all with your great knowledge and explanations and back them up thoroughly like I have been - without putting people down? I'm in fact dying to see a post of yours that does indeed respect others and don't contain some sort of put down, btw.
As far as I can see, yes, our government is broke; and that's why ICC actually raised the drop-in fee 2 years ago from the previous years' price of $3 to $4. But what of private investors? They're not subsidized to begin with, so any increase in price had better directly 1:1 correlate to increase in quality/need of financial management if you're trying to defend the point that they are indeed not simply being greedy and charging an excess based on the highest possible that they can charge. Why don't you take a look at the flooring and court conditions of Bintang, UBC, and BBC and tell me if they objectively warrant such increases in prices? I've been to all of them, and I personally do not think the qualitative differences merit such correlated increases/differences in price - at least not at the rate that they are charging.
Indeed, bigger/better gyms requires more air conditioning, lighting, initial building fee, etc. Initial building fees can be recovered in time by simply operating the business at zero economic profit if the gym is indeed catered towards outreach of badminton and not filling the owners' own pockets and charging maximally at whatever price that may be accepted at. So let's do a little bit of analysis.
Because of the increase in size, bigger gyms can also house more players at once, and a potential for maximum throughput of funding increases at an order of 4 x n x m where n and m are the dimensions of area increase of the gym (1 extra court can net a potential of 4 more players' fees). Yet, maintenance fees and electrical costs are also of an order of some constant x n x m, where that constant is the height of the gym (increase in air conditioning in terms of air produced as measure of cubic ft would be proportional to height of gym x n x m). And since electrical costs are linear in proportion to usage, such costs should easily be able to be offset and compensated by the increase in profit netted from the additional players due to the increase in size of gym (and if you're to tell me that an extra $20-30/every 3 hours (estimated? average time people stay for) isn't enough to mitigate electrical costs, then I wouldn't want to know what overpriced utilities provider you're using - 'cause that's how much I pay in a whole month)...and if they end up losing money because of empty courts everywhere, then that is the fault on the part of the gym owner given current popularity/economic conditions of badminton and lack of accurate analysis of demand prior to gym construction.
The gym owner can always choose to be economical as well. There are options of natural lighting (or low powered lighting) during the day, turning off lights/air conditioning of certain courts when not in use, etc. I've also been to new gyms such as BBC. Their ceilings are ridiculously high and unnecessary for any form of badminton play (UBC's ceiling height is actually quite ideal). Of course, higher ceilings would naturally mean a needed increase in luminous intensity of all lights - an increased electrical cost factor, and I can reasonably say once again that that is bad design and the responsibility of the gym owner upon constructing the gym.
Thus, I really don't see the merit in such constant patterns of increases in price in light of all of this if we were to weigh all aspects of proper design, cost mitigations, and demand analysis.
4. Cheap? Low cost? How cheap, and with respect to what average income back then? Did they have the same media coverage that China had? Why don't you enlighten me on this one?
there are many things wrong with the badminton development in this country. many things needs to be fixed/changed in order to foster the development of the sport.
i personally don't think the cost is that big of an issue. sure it will be better, but relatively minor. imagine if the gyms are free, how much of a difference would that have made? there are cities with free badminton gyms, San Diego for example, has 10 full time free courts in Balboa Park. we don't see badminton exploding like crazy over there.
racial demographics can make a difference. however, there are a few issues. some you have pointed out. it is an Asian dominated sport. i don't think that is the source of the problem. the source of the problem is the image of the sport. most Americans are ignorant of the sport as you have pointed out, they think badminton is sissy and rather go play basketball, etc. images are one of the things that are hard to change, unfortunately. and USAB are pretty powerless on this regards. however, this is the thing that will change slowly with all these clubs sprouting out. there will be more and more exposure to non-Asian. it will unforunately be a slow process.
letting beginners into the club and be allowed to play is an issue, but it is an issue in all sports and it is partly a social issue and partly a systematic one. clubs can try to encourage beginners, the problem can be solved with proper queuing system which most clubs are implementing (and probably what you paid for with the higher fees)
the largest problem i think is that there is no strong national system in place to encourage players to play, and no national system to train and develop players.
look at other countries, in China, every large city has a city team, the talents are scouted to play in the province team, the province team talents are scouted to play in national team. there is a catchment area covering the whole country. all organized and connected. in the US, none of that exists. Denmark, Netherland, Germany, etc have a very well organized club system. clubs are organized into different divisions and there are league play between them. top divisions are played by the national players and are well endowed by sponsors. none of that here.
and USAB, the body which is supposed to help develop badminton, is powerless as they are fund strapped.
i think we shouldn't criticize the private club, they play a larger role in helping the development of badminton than they are trying to make it rich. it is the result of the private clubs that we see a huge explosion of badminton popularity here in the area. without them, we will still be crowding into a handful of high school gyms for 5 hours in a weekend.
kwun, I think the main problem is indeed in the image of the sport. But how can this image improve if we simply keep the media and advertisement to existing privately owned clubs and seeing the clubs keep increasing price without extending the sport to another audience? Is badminton to remain an Asian sport forever (figuratively) now? If not, and if we wish to speed up the process of the sport's expansion/popularity, shouldn't we start at the root of public schools and expand from there? Show them what badminton is really like...on a larger state/national scale. But how can we do that when qualified coaches are always in the private clubs running the show among us enthusiasts/children of enthusiasts already?
With that said, I think the best place to start would be in public school P.E. classes. But then there's also the problem where public school P.E. teachers usually have to be considered "proficient" at other sports (like football, basketball, etc) in order to teach them all...to find good badminton coaches that can/are willing to do that...well, another toughie I think. There's a lack of economic incentive, and that's also why I said in the first post that we all have to make sacrifices...but who will start? =|