General

(Swiss Badminton and BWF)
365 days to go until the Badminton World Championship in Basel
Date: 8/20/2018 3:51 PM
Published by : Swiss Badminton
The countdown to the Badminton World Championship in Basel has started. Swiss Badminton and the organisers have marked the beginning of what will be an exciting year exactly one year before the start of the World Championships. Over the next 365 days, more than 50 mass sports tournaments as well as countless events for schools will be held across Switzerland at centres and clubs. These events will set the stage for the big event from 19 until 25 August at Sankt Jakobshalle in Basel.

Five members of the current Swiss national Badminton team, one of them being Sabrina Jaquet, leader and the bronze medal winner of the European Championships. Together they carry the light-as-a-feather Badminton Shuttle through Basel, playfully and yet precisely. The video as a whole, but no less Basel itself, are a symbolic setting. After all, when two of the largest and most important badminton events take place at Sankt Jakobshalle, they are expected to inspire anyone involved in sports anywhere in Switzerland. 

It is as early as this September that Swiss Badminton starts a series of tournaments in mass sports at clubs and private Badminton centres. You can register for the “#Allin4Basel2019” tournament series until the end of August. All participants get tickets to the World Championships. The event is seeing resounding success: Even at this early stage, hundreds of badminton players, both male and female, are taking part in the event, and they will travel to Basel. And the registration process is still open...

In February 2019, Swiss Badminton will also launch a wide range of sporting activities in schools intended to bring the fastest racket sport in the world into Swiss schools. Both activities last until the early summer of 2019.

The Yonex Swiss Open will take place from 12 until 17 March 2019. The best Badminton players in the world will pay a visit to Basel's Sankt Jakobshalle during this world-ranking tournament with a prize money of USD 150,000. This event brings together the best of the best in the city at the Rhine Knee, and this year, the tournament even has double significance. This is because the qualifying will take place at the hall in which the world championship will be held. None of the world stars are not very likely to pass up the opportunity to prepare for this top event on the original court.

The real highlight will be the Badminton World Championship taking place at the recently renovated Sankt Jakobshalle from 19 until 25 August 2019. The 25th edition of the world championships – the TOTAL BWF Badminton World Championships – is expected to bring together around 250 of the best male and female players from the Badminton world, hailing from more than 50 different countries. For the first time in the history of international sports, the Para-Badminton World Championships will take place at the same time and at the same venue. The BWF Para-Badminton World Championships will take place from 21 until 25 August 2019, and they are set to be a sporting event on an unprecedented scale. Para-Badminton has been rapidly gaining popularity since having been added to the Paralympics for Tokyo 2020. 250 male and female players are expected to participate in the Para-Badminton World Championships in Basel.
The tournaments bring the hotel sector in and around Basel an extra 15,000 overnight stays. This huge sporting event will be broadcast live on television in around 100 countries, and as such, it will reach a global audience of 1 billion viewers. 30,000 spectators and 200 media representatives are expected to attend the event. Badminton World Federation BWF is the organiser of the world championships, led by former Danish world-class player Poul-Erik Høyer Larsen. The Swiss Badminton association, Swiss Badminton, organises the event in large part with the help of the experience OK crew of Yonex Swiss Open and OK president Charles Keller.

This large-scale event has been planned to have a total budget of CHF 4 million for both of the world championships taking place at the same time. The host city of Basel makes a substantial contribution to the budget via the Swisslos sports fund.

“The fact that these two events are happening at the same time allows people to experience Badminton as a sport as intensively as never before,” says Robbert de Kock, president of Swiss Badminton, happily. He added that the organisation would like to see this event as an opportunity to show this attractive and dynamic sport to the Swiss general public. “We will try to involve young people in the schools, but also thousands of players, both male and female, of other popular sports, and to bring them to the hall to allow them to experience this event live.

The World Championships hosted in Switzerland open up new opportunities for the top young Swiss badminton players. The general public is becoming more aware of this discipline, and this creates good conditions allowing us to use the full potential of these up-and-coming players. “Realistically, we should not expect any one of our players to become world champion”, says Robbert de Kock. “Having said that, the World Championship can release the energy required for both male and female athletes, but also for our sport in general.”

The OK, lead by president Charles Keller, also has to take action: “As a sport, badminton enjoys a vast amount of support in Basel, thanks to the long-standing tradition of the Swiss Open tournaments. With the two world championship events happening at the same time in August, however, we will have to put in considerably more effort.” Preparations have been running at full speed since Basel was selected as the host city for the competition for the title: “We want to keep the high standard that we provide to spectators and athletes at the Swiss Open tournaments also for this considerably larger world championship event”, says Charles Keller. This represents a huge challenge for the entire organisation with its more than 500 volunteers. “As a venue, Basel quite simply offers excellent conditions for this.”

Tickets for the big event have already gone on sale (www.basel2019.org). “The demand for tickets is enormous, not just from badminton powerhouses, but also from Europe,” OK member Christian Wackernagel says enthusiastically. Demand from within Switzerland is also on the rise: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the best players in this discipline in the world live next spring.” The refurbished Sankt Jakobshalle has everything it takes to make this happen. Tickets are available starting from as little as CHF 19.


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