The BWF have recently announced that they are streaming Live Super Series events via their own official channel on YouTube.
This is a nice move by the BWF, certainly for us Brits after more badminton coverage. The deal is that they will stream their “world feed” via YouTube free of charge.
Badminton Alpha was on hand to check this out during the recent Indonesian Open Super Series event that has recently been held and we have to say they have done a very good job in doing so.
The quality of the coverage is excellent, with the highest quality feed being almost TV quality and with the official TV commentators this looks like a winning package for the BWF. The only improvement I would suggest would be the ability to select which games you would like to watch as at the moment only 1 court is covered, this is however is normal for Badminton broadcasting.
The BWF however seems to have missed out a step though as they still lack TV coverage here in the UK for these events. Live streaming of these events is probably only possible in the UK because of the fact that the tournaments aren’t available on UK TV yet. However, I believe if these were available on TV the broadcast rights holder within the UK may be well within their rights to block the online broadcasts via YouTube being available free of charge. In an ideal world we would have both available for the viewer.
This is a nice step by the BWF to raise the profile of Badminton and bringing it into the 21st century and many other sports can learn from this, however I think to truly raise the profile the BWF need to secure TV rights for these events in the UK as only the hardcore badminton fans will tune in online for these events.
