BWF unveils 18 hosts for major events
KUCHING: The Badminton World Federation (BWF) has unveiled 18 hosts for upcoming major events across the next seven years – with the sport’s pinnacle tournaments headed to 11 member associations from four continents.
A press statement said this is a landmark occasion for BWF as it endeavours to increase badminton’s global appeal and exposure in traditional and developing centres throughout the world.
The unprecedented decision to award 18 hosts in one bid process aligns with BWF’s vision to establish long- term targets to broaden its development initiatives and create a strategic position for the sport around new projects and partnerships.
BWF President Poul-Erik Hoyer said the announcement endorses BWF’s long-term vision and efforts to globalise the sport.
“This is an unprecedented decision for BWF where we are announcing 18 of our major event country hosts as far forward as 2025.
“It allows all of our hosts to work closely with BWF to ensure the staging of world-class tournaments as we continue to grow the sport globally,” he said.
“We were lucky to receive some outstanding bids, all with the same forward- thinking vision as us. Following an exhaustive assessment period, we were able to determine the host cities and countries that best represented the interests of the sport. We’d like to thank all parties involved in this process and look forward to venturing to new locations that have not had the honour of hosting our major events before.”
Final bids were presented at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre on Thursday.
BWF council members listened to bid presentations from member associations for the 18 major events announced between 2019 and 2025.
Council decisions were based on all of the bids and recommendations made to Council fol lowing dialogues in the BWF major events consultation process.
All bids will now go into a second and final phase of evaluation where the last details of the bids will be clarified before contractual finalisation where, in some cases, the final bid city will be confirmed and then announced.
BWF secretary-general Thomas Lund added, “The process that BWF went through with all hosts has been a very productive and new experience but also left BWF with very difficult considerations on some very good and long-term bids. We feel that today’s (Thursday) outcome is good for the future of the sport.”
The decisions subject to finalisation are BWF Thomas & Ubers Cups: 2020 – Aarhus, Denmark,2022–Bangkok,Thailand, 2024 — China; BWF Sudirman Cup: 2021 – China, 2023 – New Delhi, India, 2025 – China; BWF World Championships: 2021 – Spain, 2022 – Tokyo, Japan, 2023 – Copenhagen, Denmark, 2025 – Paris, France.
For the BWF World Junior Championships, the hosts are 2019 – Kazan, Russia, 2020 – Auckland, New Zealand, 2021 – China, 2022 – Spain, 2023 – Honolulu, USA; while for the BWF World Senior Championships the hosts are 2021 – Spain, 2023 – Seoul, Korea, and 2025 – Auckland, New Zealand.
There wi l l be no World Championships in 2020 and 2024 due to the Olympic Games.