Streaming from the World Junior Championships 2023 is apparently not a BWF priority. As a result coaches, parents and family members, teammates, and others with an interest in following the proceedings, will have to settle for the live score on Tournament Software.
Streaming badminton matches online is easy – but BWF can’t be bothered
In my personal opinion, there is no good reason not to offer streaming from the BWF World Junior Championships 2023. Not one.
I suppose this is yet another demonstration of how ridiculously amateurish our beloved sport is governed by BWF.
Let me give you a bit of background:
- The Junior World Championships will showcase the most talented badminton players on Earth. The best of them play badminton at a very high level.
- Some of these junior players will soon be active on the BWF World Tour. Some of them likely will become the future stars of badminton.
- Past winners include badminton icons such as Sun Jun, Saina Nehwal, Chen Long, Ratchanok Intanon, Viktor Axelsen, Kento Momota, Kunlavut Vitidsarn, and Yu Yang, just to mention a few.
Many of us would like to watch our countrymen compete, and, I would have thought, many would like to watch some good battles between some of the best badminton juniors in the world.
Moreover, I suspect, a good number of dedicated coaches might want to encourage badminton players to get inspiration (and motivation) from watching streamed BWF World Junior Championship matches
But, alas, unless you’re in Spokane, Washington, you can’t. Because BWF in their infinite wisdom decided that streaming from the World Junior Championships is not important.
Interestingly, on the European U19 badminton tournament circuit most events offer streaming and many tournaments stream all courts. And some local tournament organizers, f.ex. the Dutch Junior International tournament, do an absolutely excellent job of streaming from start to finish.
As a badminton lover, I must say – in earnest – I too am starting to believe that badminton is not really important. Because of how badminton is governed by BWF, the sport comes across as poor, disorganized, centralistic, and dysfunctional.
If BWF was an actual business relying on customer satisfaction and loyalty, it would have gone bankrupt long ago.
