China’s Hangzhou to host badminton World Tour Finals for four years
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China's Zheng Si Wei (left) and Huang Ya Qiong hit a return during their mixed doubles semi-final at the Indonesia Open.
PHOTO: AFP
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SHANGHAI – International badminton’s flagship event, the World Tour Finals, will be held in Hangzhou for the next four years, including 2023, a further sign the post-Covid revival of major sports events in China is gathering pace.
Badminton is hugely popular in the country and the national team are a dominant force in the global arena, having recently retained the mixed-team Sudirman Cup for a record 13th time.
The world’s second-largest economy behind the United States is also seen as a key area for the sport’s growth and development.
The Badminton World Federation (BWF) has previously talked of “ever-growing numbers of both competitive and recreational-level players” in China, and a skyrocketing fan base.
So it is no surprise that the 2023 season-ending BWF World Tour Finals will be held there from Dec 13 to 17, the federation announced late on Wednesday. The Finals were last held in China in 2019, in Guangzhou.
Hangzhou, 160km from Shanghai, will in September also host the pandemic-delayed Asian Games, a multi-sport event originally due to have been staged in 2022.
“Hangzhou, with its superb sporting infrastructure and experience in staging elite international events, is an ideal host for our Finals,” said BWF secretary-general Thomas Lund.
“It is with great excitement to confirm Hangzhou, China, as the host of our BWF World Tour Finals for this cycle. We look forward to the tour’s top eight players and pairs in each category fighting it out for glory in front of thousands of passionate fans.”
Except for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which took place in a zero-Covid-19 “bubble”, almost all global sport ground to a halt in China after the pandemic emerged there in late 2019.
In May, badminton’s Sudirman Cup became the first major international sporting event to be held in the country after its tough zero-Covid policies were ditched at the end of 2022.
Since then, world sport organisations have been eager to relaunch lucrative tournaments across the nation.
Top-class tennis makes a full-throttle return to China from September, with the women’s WTA Tour staging six tournaments after reversing a boycott initiated because of concerns about the safety of Chinese player Peng Shuai.
The men’s ATP Tour will return with four events, culminating in October’s prestigious Shanghai Masters featuring the world’s top players.
Diamond League athletics, international golf and snooker events are all scheduled to return to China in 2023.
Formula One’s Chinese Grand Prix, in Shanghai, will return in April 2024 after last being staged in 2019. AFP
