In badminton tournaments, men's singles and women's singles have equal prize money. So does doubles and mixed doubles. I'm not sure how fair this is. In other sports, the income of the players are determined by how many people want to watch them. i.e NBA players earn a lot more than WNBA players. It cannot be denied that Men's Doubles attract a lot more people compared to Mixed Doubles. And prize money largely depends on audience and sponsors, who largely depend on how many people would watch. In other words, men's doubles carry the audience and sponsors a lot more than mixed doubles. Shouldn't they then be compensated more? If not, then why don't we just include Paralympic badminton in the tournaments and they can have a share of the prize money? What is your thoughts on this?
while i don't disagree w/ your assessment —as far as the more fans you draw the greater share of the pie you should get— the only way to prove one event is more popular than another is to sell tickets specifically for each event. then you would have concrete targeted statistics regarding what the public prefers. all that aside, can you imagine what the conversations between bwf & the athletes would be like about an impending redistribution of wealth? and that's just one worm in a very large can of worms.
Equal pay to women is a great achievement in badminton. If you pay them less, there would be less female professionals = less role models for girls to join and train at your club. And for most clubs it is already difficult to attract (and keep!) enough girls for playing interclub matches. YouTube views of the AE20 finals: MD: 2.163.793 XD: 1.281.791 WS: 846.418 MS: 428.010 WD: 295.298 Clearly, MD is most popular but XD ranks second. And should Viktor Axelsen be paid less?
I personally think that the doubles discipline should all get a more fair prize money compare to singles. It's far away from the doubled prize money of singles. IMO the prize money is not that high compared to other sports, badminton is not that popular like other sports and IMO it can be a really toxic enviroment if the prize money determines whose gender play badminton at professional level and which discipline has the highest prize money. IMO this will lead to discrimination of discipline and genders and will make some disciplines even more worse to watch, because less player will descide to play professional badminton. Is it a fair system? I don't think so. Females do the same job, work and passion. IMO this gap shouldn't be so large like for NBA vs. WNBA. Is this really the case? I personally play MD and XD and in the last years I made the progress to watch more XD, because MD got less interesting to me and often the same pairs got pushed by the BWF YT channel. If I was live at the venue, I often decided more who played than which discipline. I would watch Stoeva/Stoeva vs. Lee/Shin and would make a lunch if not popular MD play. It also depends how popular the sport is in the specific country, which also leads to the sponsors. The audience also depends on the entries. The number of watchers also dependens on the entires. Is this really the case? IMO an assumption without any data. If I need to decide between watanabe/higashino vs. Zheng/Huang and Ahsan/Setiawan vs. Li/Liu, I would always choose the first one. Didn't they compensated more? The legends vision is a sausage party. Male players can play longer than females due pregancy, posterboy, signatures, inviduell sponsorships etc. is something where male players get pushed more. Do you really think that XD, WD should be hold down? Is this fair? So you call XD players retarded or what's the point? Paralympic badminton has also a number of different disciplines and also rules e.g. for wheelchair. You can't mix them in and need to keep them seperate in own disciplines and this will blast the venue, because more courts will be needed and at the end paralympic athletes don't will have the same chances. They don't get pushed by sponsors, less money to travel, so the number of international players will be very very low.
Well, first, I doubt youtube views is a good measure. Second, it's not just about the finals, there are all the other rounds as well. Third, if XD indeed carries more audience and sponsors than Men's singles, then sure they should be paid more. I'd want Axelsen to be paid less in that case.
Are you saying that just because someone put in the same or more effort, they should be compensated the same or more? I'm sure paralympic athletes work very hard, they even have it much harder because of their disability. Why then shouldn't they get compensated more than regular athletes?
It would be easier for me to understand why you have something against XD and what is the praise for MD to reward it more? Do your really think that MD get cancelnd nobody would watch badminton? The prize money is not the only income of a badminton pro. IMO mixed doubles is more tactical than MD, the woman need to handle smashs from male players (no other discipline does have this imbalance). The male player need to work hard and run more than in MD. So what is your intention to reward MD more than XD? Based on what and which data? If MD has the majority for sponsors and viewers, very few people should watch uber cup, tickets should be much cheaper and the prize money much lower, but is this the case? IMO paralympic athletes do big things, should get more attention, get more worshipped and respected, but I can't change the view of the whole world, because each watcher need something to identify them with the pros. I assume that you are a man and wouldn't watch WD, right? So why should normal guys watch and enjoy paralympics? In wheelchair badminton you have totally different rules, tactics and rallying. There is no connections the normal player can make.
XD is just an example. If XD actually brings more audience and sponsors, then they should be paid more than the others. Why would you assume as a man I wouldn't watch WD? I do watch and enjoy WD. I'm not saying everyone should watch WD or paralympic, just that if they don't bring in as much audience and sponsors as the other division, then shouldn't they be paid less? Like in any other sport.
Uh the view counts from ONE final isn't gonna be enough. Some of them seem about right, like WD at the bottom, but MS ranking 4th? Put in LD vs LCW and that isn't gonna be #4 for long. Pay is a difficult topic-if you measure based on purely level alone, WD won't exist. Whether people want that or not is up for discussion. If based on popularity, it wouldn't seem fair to the people based on level. If it's completely even, then it doesn't seem fair to the stronger and more popular player. The UFC does an interesting job of balancing all three factors. Also wouldn't quite agree XD being tactical as MD. XD strategies are a lot more obvious due to the strength gap, but it generally lacks the depth due to the same reason. You don't see highly highly tactical drive/net battles with daddies/minions/zhang nan.
Realistically we can't account for views, it really depends on whether an indonesian is competing or not. Compare the all England XD finals 2019 (zsw/hyq vs yuta/arisa) and 2020 (praveen/melati vs dechapol/sapsiree) with ~250000 and 1.6 million views respectively. Of course there are other factors but it's still over 6x the views. Also I have never seen a player complain about prize money distribution so why should we?
The NBA vs WNBA argument is very flawed. The WNBA is operating at a huge loss already and getting subsidized by the NBA. While I think that in many contexts, you should help true egality along by forcing equal pay, this most definitely isn't one of them - you can't force people to pay for something they just don't want. It's different in badminton, where all disciplines are played in one venue and setting, and where prize money isn't at the ludicrous level NBA salaries are at. I agree that the comparison between XD and paralympic badminton is stupid. But the entire argument is ridiculous when you look at that excellent example of AE viewership, where XD is FAR ahead of MS, for example. I'm pretty sure it's a big spectator draw and see no reason to reduce the prize money to fall even further behind the singles disciplines in terms of prize money per player. Only measure that I'd really consider is adjusting doubles vs singles prize pools to get them closer to equal amounts per player, a slight advantage to singles players could be argued as fair imop since many of them have to pay their own coaching teams etc and have no partner to share those costs with, and I think the MS finals of majors are usually the most watched discipline (with the exception of this year's AE, which might in part be caused by the participants).
Maybe the solution is to make WD (or whatever is the less-watched ones) more attractive. For WD, maybe a faster shuttle by one speed? I don't know about other people, but I like watching badminton full of technical shots and amazing reflexes, not a grinding contest to see whose shoulder gives up or randomly misses first after 100 shots. I don't think the ladies are any worse at doing fancy shots than men (cf TTY), but maybe because there is almost no incentive to do it in WD, the selection bias may be towards the consistent grinders. Not sure what the best situation would be in WS, personally I'd try to bias the field towards the more technical style of play, but I am not sure what shuttle speed would best achieve this. At the end of the day for a sport to be truly professional it needs to be primarily a form of performance entertainment, no different from movies and music concerts.
it would depend which 'army' you play for. soldiers in certain fully gov't funded and/or corporate subsidized armies do not have to pay for anything. for me it comes down to which requires more work, which is more physically difficult? ie. md v. ms: is it more difficult to cover the entire court yourself and chase down every shot OR jump smashing frequently and having to be quicker? if anyone can answer that i'm interested in how they would revise the prize money breakdown from this chart: https://extranet.bwfbadminton.com/docs/document-system/81/1466/1471/Section 5.3.5 - Distribution of Prize Money.pdf what it costs an athlete to participate in professional sports should never be a compensating factor in the meritorious nature of professional sports.
Really you guys are missing the entire point. Should less money be given to anyone? Hell no. We need to pour MORE money into EVERY discipline so that being a pro badminton player that makes a living isn't so unrealistic. Then more athletes would be willing to give it a shot (instead of usually dropping out as a promising junior to go to college to "make an actual living") and the level of all the players would get much higher and the sport would win.
Well this whole thing is just a meaningless thought experiment, no? So why not change it from "let's take away from hard working athletes because they are female" to "How can we get more money into the sport?"
yes, because we're basically dreaming bwf will find common sense. reversing the rotation of the earth would be easier. again, that's up to bwf. many people have been railing at them for decades, myself included. but, how long can one talk to a bottomless pit of ignorance? how long are you willing to teach a chicken to drive a car? in the meantime all we can do here is fan-talk at each other existentially.
Equal pay is one of the proudest and probably the only thing badminton has over other sports. Since it’s all bwf unlike tennis with atp and wta, it’s gonna be same. I’m not quite sure on the stats, but I think WS is more popular than MD thanks to its diversity. So there’s no gender equation governing the sport. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
