Inside the wildly competitive world of recreational badminton in Singapore, where players jockey for courts and space is snapped up in minutes

Growing up in the New Jersey suburbs, a couple of things defined my summers, among them hot dogs, sunburns, and drawn-out games of backyard badminton with my dad and little brother. We had a net lined with a hot pink streak, and by the time the sun set on weekends, we'd be tired, covered in grass stains, and nursing stubbed toes.

Now I live in Singapore, halfway across the world from where I grew up. Bergen County this is not — and here, badminton is no mere evening activity. It's a lifestyle, and a highly competitive one at that.

"All the way back, badminton has been popular in Singapore," said Clarence Loh, a 41-year-old brokerage owner who started a community badminton group during the pandemic.

Singapore (which is smaller than New York City) saw 770,000 court bookings in 2019, according to Active SG, a government site dedicated to keeping the population active and healthy. The city-state claims an estimated 210,000 active badminton players, which means that some 3.75% of the population identifies as a badminton player.

And while sub-4% of a population may not seem like a lot, it's a very active 4% — one that books up courts within a minute of them becoming available, trades and sells off those bookings in a robust secondary market, and just may have the local parenting style to thank for its competitive edge.

A hot commodity

As any Singapore badminton aficionado will tell you, the most challenging part of playing is securing a court.

Loh said that online bookings for the week ahead get snapped up within minutes of being posted.

"The system is not very good," Loh said, explaining that people can only book one court hour per ID card. But some coaches, he said, will show up at courts with 20 people's IDs and book 20 court hours in one fell swoop.

"The whole ordeal we hear from players is that booking the indoor courts is really hard right now," Loh said. "They're always getting snapped up."

Demand is significant enough that two new venues, each of which has 20 badminton courts, opened this year alone. One of those venues, Singapore EXPO, is housed in Singapore's biggest convention venue. Courts are open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. and go for between 12 and 18 Singapore dollars an hour (roughly $9 - $13), depending on the time of day.

In an August Facebook post, Heng Swee Keat, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister, wrote that EXPO serves a double purpose: It's at once helping make up for Singapore's dearth of badminton courts and fill up its surplus of venue spaces, which have gone virtually unused during the pandemic.

Players looking to clock some court time can also book private courts or community courts, many of which are outdoors — or they can turn to the robust off-the-books secondary market.

Finding Singapore's secondary badminton court market is as simple as going to Carousell, Singapore's version of Craigslist. I searched the site and within minutes had found a handful of listings selling court times (mostly between 5 and 15 Singapore dollars per hour), seeking courts, and offering coaching lessons. I messaged six of them and didn't hear back from five; one declined to answer.

Their hesitance to engage with a journalist isn't surprising, given the government's reaction in the past.

For the most part, those selling courts appeared to be offloading their purchases at face value, but that wasn't always the case. In February, local outlet Straits Times reported that people were reselling badminton, tennis, and soccer court or field bookings for as much as 300 Singapore dollars. Sport Singapore vowed to clamp down on the reselling practice, ultimately suspending and blacklisting 255 accounts for reselling bookings.

After I sent out my inquiries, my Carousell account was terminated for what the site deemed to be "patterns of suspicious activities." I reached out to Carousell for more information, and a rep told me their AI had determined I was a scammer based on the quantity of my messages and my IP location being tied to New York. Following my query, Carousell reactivated my account.

Sport Singapore — a branch of the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth dedicated to sports — did not respond to my request for comment for this story. The Singapore Badminton Association, the governing board for badminton in Singapore, turned down multiple requests for comment.

Taking it to the big leagues

The competitive nature of the recreational leagues is perhaps no surprise if you turn your gaze to the competitive field of professional badminton across southeast Asia.

In the 2021 world rankings, Asian countries (Japan, Indonesia, Korea, China) dominate the lists, with the occasional European country (England, Denmark) sneaking into the rankings. In men's and women's doubles alike, every one of the top 10 teams hails from an Asian country.

The sport is popular in the region, said Haresh Deol, the cofounder of Malaysian news site Twentytwo13, because it "requires little space and is an economically friendly sport." As he explained to Nikkei Asia, "all you need is a racket and a shuttlecock, and even without the net, two players can already play a simplified version of the sport, which is common in many neighborhoods in Malaysia."

It has also led to fierce rivalries. Singapore's No. 1 player, Loh Kean Yew, drew his fair share of local headlines (see also: "Loh Kean Yew's coach beats chest vigorously like a gorilla to motivate him during matches") when he beat Japan's top player, Kento Momota, in late November and advanced to the quarter-finals of the Indonesia Open.

Terry Hee, a fellow professional badminton player, has been competing and training professionally for more than ten years.

He was 13 when he started competing internationally; at 16, he made it onto the Singapore national team; and now, at 26, he plays on Singapore's national senior badminton squad. He told me he trains five days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and again from 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. On Saturdays, he has a single training session, and Sundays are a rest day.

We squeezed in a call on a Thursday, during what I quickly learned was his lunch break between training sessions. When I asked him why he chose to play badminton instead of soccer or tennis, both of which are popular here, he laughed.

"Are they?" he asked, questioning the other sports' popularity in relation to badminton's. "I started playing when I was 10, and I fell in love with it. It was the only choice I had at that time because my parents wanted me to play sports and get all my energy out."

Hee said he thinks badminton is popular in Singapore because it's cheap and it's an easy sport for families to play together. It also dovetails nicely with the predominant Singaporean parenting style, he said: Many parents locally dissuade their kids from setting their sights on professional leagues, which breeds a competitive nature in the non-professional field.

"Singapore parents are very realistic," Hee said. "They want their kids to study and do well, become doctors. Not many parents would support their kids to do sports as a career in Singapore."

"Definitely, parenting plays a part. In terms of career planning, you won't have many choices in sports," agreed Daniel Tan, the founder of Singapore's Be A Champ Badminton Academy. "In Singapore, the majority of parents are still very focused on academics," he added.

The pandemic brought about some changes for the sport.

Demand for courts has risen as people have sought out local recreational opportunities, the company that manages Singapore EXPO told the Straits Times.

The type of demand has shifted, too. Joseph, a 22-year-old college student studying computer science, said doubles matches used to be the most popular option. But at various points throughout the pandemic, Singapore has capped group sizes at two people (they're currently capped at five), so Joseph and his friends had to switch to singles games to stay within the legal group-size limits.

The government-mandated group sizes play a big part in the court shortage, said Tan of Be A Champ Academy. Tan said he saw a sudden spike in interest in badminton three or four years ago with the launch of the Badminton World Federation, though things have also picked up during the pandemic.

"Before the pandemic and after the pandemic is totally different," Tan said. "Before the pandemic, we could easily fit in one coach and six students in a court. But with the current restrictions, it's four students to one coach. And previously it was even worse — one student to one coach."

"The majority of full-time coaches have been on unpaid leave for 15 months because of the courts issue," Tan continued. "When there are no courts and no badminton halls open, we can't do anything — we can't coach." Tan estimates there are roughly 300 full-time and part-time certified badminton coaches in Singapore, and those who have been affected by the court shortage have turned to everything from working as Grab food delivery drivers to COVID-swab administrators to make ends meet.

Notably, badminton is not the only leisure sport to have seen a spike in Singapore during the pandemic. Bike sales and rentals in the city-state soared in 2020 as people looked for activities they could do under lockdown. And, as Bloomberg reported in April, the cost of memberships at one of Singapore's exclusive golf clubs is up 40% from pre-pandemic prices. The rise in leisure sports is also not limited to only Singapore — a similar trend was observed in the US a mere three months into the pandemic.

Of course, it's not all competition, fights over courts, and black-market dealings.

Just ask Loh, the brokerage-company owner. He's the third generation of his family to live in Tiong Bahru, a hip neighborhood about a 15-minute drive from downtown that's home to heritage buildings, coffee shops, and high-rise HDB (public housing) units.

Loh told me that he used to fly across the Southeast Asian region for work, estimating he used to spend less than two months of the year in Singapore. Then the pandemic struck, borders closed, and, in need of a way to fill time (and get in shape, he said), he turned to badminton.

For him, it's a family affair: His dad used to coach at the school level, and Loh trained with the national team in the late 90s. His oldest son is starting to pick up the game too, though Loh doesn't want to push him into it.

"My dad and I are building up a community of players," Loh said. "We started four months ago and became a beautiful community. Now we have about 34 players — adults and kids. The oldest is mid-40s, youngest is 9 or 10."

But the one thing that rang true with everyone I spoke to for this story, whether they were building a professional career or a local community of players, is the court crunch — and the pros are no exception. When Hee is training, court space is arranged for him. It's a different story if he's trying to book one for fun, he said.

"There are many private coaches out there who coach in government sports halls, so they'll fight for the courts," Hee said. "Courts open for booking every day at 7 a.m. By 7:01, they're gone."