NANNING, May 22 (Xinhua) -- Poul-Erik Hoyer Larsen, the president of the Badminton World Federation (BWF), expressed his support to refinements like a new scoring system here on Wednesday.
"I think it (11-point game) is the right thing to do in order to make badminton entertaining, we need to constantly be refined and then make our product better. If we're not doing that, we will be stereotype and not be appealing for the next generation," Larsen said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.
For making games shorter to attract more fans, BWF was considering of introducing best-of-five 11-point games instead of the current three games to 21 points. However, this proposal was overruled in the federation's annual meeting last year in Bangkok.
During the ongoing 2019 Sudirman Cup in Nanning, England defeated Denmark in a six-hour marathon match on Monday evening, bringing the discussion of a new scoring system back on the table.
"They (BWF members who voted against 11-point games) maybe felt that it was too close to the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020. Maybe they want to reconsider it after Tokyo 2020 and then make a change. So we have to wait and see what will happen," Larsen added.
BWF has a new project called "AirBadminton", which was launched in Guangzhou last week, to make it more entertaining for fans.
"We want to have everybody to play badminton. So we have just launched AirBadminton, it was actually very good. The next step for us is actually to spread it out. We open up with the AirBadminton in China, it will be interesting to see how Chinese fans are embracing and using that opportunity for the good of badminton," Larsen said.
AirBadminton is designed to create opportunities for people of all ages to play badminton on hard, grass and sand surfaces in parks, gardens, streets, playgrounds and beaches.
