With Badminton being THE fastest racket sport in the world AND THE most participated racket sport in the world, you would think it would be unrivalled in the world of the internet search, with millions of people logging on to find out the results of the latest competitions from around the world. This however isn't reality, I take a look to see how Badminton stacks up against its rival in the Sporting world.. Tennis!
I'll compare some simple terms in Google, “Badminton” vs “Tennis”. Using Google Trends I will take a look at 2009 across the world with "Badminton" in Blue and "Tennis" in Red:
Top of the Region Tree is Malaysia with Badminton receiving a S.V. Index of 1 compared to the 0.88 of Tennis. That result isn't that surprising, Badminton essentially being Malaysia's national sport. In second position we have The Philippines! Here tennis outstrips Badminton as a search term almost 2:1 however, this is the country where Badminton is second in terms of amount of people searching for the “badminton”. To round off the podium we have Denmark! The home of FZ Forza and the Nation that flies the flag of Badminton within Europe. Even in the strongholds of Badminton, Tennis is still “more searched for” even in Denmark its 1 : 1.75 in Tennis' favour!
How and more importantly WHY is Tennis more searched for than badminton? The Main Point I am trying to get across is that Badminton needs to raise its profile. This maybe easier said than done, however it can't be THAT difficult to market the “World's Fastest Racket Sport” ? I think one of the main issues is that Tennis is far easier to watch on TV for the casual fan that Badminton is. Also, Tennis is a lot more well promoted than Badminton globally, if you ask the “Average Dave” on the street the majority of times they would be able to name most of the Tennis Grand-Slams, do you think they would be able to name any of the main Badminton tournaments ? I don't think so, certainly here in the UK. What's going to done by the Badminton Federations across the world to fix this ? This is all the more important now as the World championships in Paris are currently being held, are they on any UK TV channels ? …. No.
Feel free to leave comments, the Google trends also emits China, possibly THE most popular country for Badminton.
