I’ve heard badminton is Taiwan’s second-most popular sport by participation, yet surprisingly few people watch matches. I play once a week myself, but I only started watching on MOD a couple of years ago—and I’d never been to an international tournament in person.

MOD picture quality is already excellent, with slow-motion replays and commentary. On TV the players look bigger than they do from the stands. So why bother going live? Here’s how I answered that question before and after the match:

1. The sense of speed is different. MOD updates about 30 frames per second. The eye only needs around 24 fps to perceive continuous motion, but everything between those frames is gone—which is why broadcasts lean so hard on slow-motion replays.
   In a sport as fast-changing as badminton, only live eyes can catch every instant of what’s happening on court.
2. Spatial awareness. In person you finally feel how high a professional clears the shuttle, how high and hard a jump smash really is, and how far forward the players stand.
3. Other senses. You clearly hear whether the shuttle hit the sweet spot, whether a string broke, whether rackets clashed, the heavy footwork that shows how hard they brake… things TV can’t deliver.
4. The little rituals of a formal match that never make the broadcast—for example, realizing the court mop is hidden inside the triangular boards at the side. Haha.
5. NT$800 for an international final, no seating restrictions—genuinely cheap.

Three highlights from watching the Taipei Badminton Open live:

1. Like tennis, badminton has deuce: in principle the first to 21 wins, but if the score is tied from 20 onward, you must win by two.
   In the women’s doubles final that decided the champions, the score kept tying—from 20 all the way to 28–26, at least six deuces—before Thailand’s Jongkolphan Kititharakul and Rawinda Prajongjai edged past Korea for a hard-earned title.
2. Taiwan’s Chou Tien-chen, then world No. 2, unsurprisingly took the men’s singles crown. His fans (do we call them “Tian fans”?) were loud and proud—I nearly lost my voice and clapped my hands raw. I hadn’t expected President Tsai Ing-wen to show up that day to cheer him on, and she presented him with the trophy at the end.
3. After Chou’s ceremony, many fans started leaving. I’d taken the high-speed rail to Taipei early for a class reunion and my eyelids were getting heavy—I had no idea the men’s doubles final would be even more dramatic. There were quite a few Malaysian fans in the arena. From the start, the scores stayed within a point of each other until Malaysia took the first game 21–19.
   In the second game, Korea suddenly found another gear and won 21–15 by a wide margin. In the third, Korea kept the momentum and led all the way to 20–15.
   At that point, everyone—including, I imagine, the Korean pair themselves—thought the title was theirs. After all, those were five championship points: you only need one more point to win, and you get five chances.
   Korea never converted that one point. Malaysia staged a huge comeback and took the title.

A few last thoughts:

1. As NBA fans on PTT like to say, “the ball is round”—a reminder that sport is unpredictable. Among badminton players there’s a similar cliché: “the shuttle is alive until it hits the floor,” meaning the other side can always scramble it back and turn the match around. We shouldn’t give up on our dreams, and when we’re near the finish line we especially can’t afford to ease up for a second.
2. Watching badminton isn’t as popular as watching tennis, for many reasons. Badminton grew out of colonial India under British rule; tennis grew out of aristocratic leisure in Britain—so packaging and business models diverged. Older TV quality also struggled with badminton’s pace, tiny shuttle, and subtle wrist work, making it hard to share the joy of watching. Now Asia is rising, bandwidth and high-frame-rate video are no longer the bottleneck, and modern attention spans favor a fast game. Maybe badminton’s moment is coming.
3. Having the president encourage athletes in person is great, and sponsors like EVA Air, McDonald’s, and MOD supporting Tai Tzu-ying are wonderful—but what matters even more is that fans watch: in arenas, online, or on TV. Appreciating the sport is what builds the whole ecosystem and raises the level of play.