BWF members vote against implementation of new scoring system at 82nd AGM

Badminton World Federation (BWF) members have decided to continue with the existing scoring system at their 82nd annual general meeting (AGM) held on Saturday. Two-thirds of the members decided against a change from a best-of-three 21-point games to best-of-five games of 11 points each. A change in the scoring format would have come into effect at the Tokyo Olympics.

The proposal was made by Badminton Indonesia and Maldives Badminton Association on the basis of several factors, including making the sport more television-friendly in terms of duration.

Badminton Asia, Badminton Korea Association and Chinese Taipei Badminton Association also supported the proposal. The proposal will be discussed and decided on later by the BWF and even if it comes into effect, it won’t do so before January 2022.

According to the proposed system, a game will be won by a shuttler who reaches the 11-point mark instead of 21. If the score reaches 10-all (instead of 20-all), whoever gets the two-point lead first wins the game. Another suggestion was, if the score becomes 14-all, the side scoring the 15th point shall win the game.

However, this is not the first time the proposal has been put to vote. Back in 2018 at the BWF AGM in Bangkok, the proposal received 129 votes in favor, while 128 votes went against it. However, the proposal didn’t pass as it required a two-thirds majority of 168 votes.

BWF Council first proposed the change in 2014

The proposal for this new scoring system was first put forth by the BWF council in 2014. Three years later, at a council session in Jamaica, the proposal to implement the 5x11 system was discussed in an elaborate manner along with the broadcasters’ feedback.

Meanwhile, the qualification events for the Tokyo Olympics are over with both the Malaysia Open and Singapore Open having been postponed due to COVID-19. The BWF will now allocate more than 50 spots based on the ranking list which will be published in June.