Sundis’ Field report: TotalEnergies BWF World Championships 2023

I have just returned home from 2 weeks of holiday in Copenhagen, and yes, I did of course go to the WC, that was the main reason for the trip.

I will write a summary of everything for my fellow BC members.

The story started last year, I was thinking about going to the -23 WC and was planning to buy a 1 week season ticket on nov 1st at noon when tickets released. However, last minute I had some doubt, I also saw that it was not possible to get a great seat when buying an all-week ticket. After hesitating for 15 minutes all season tickets had already sold out (most good tickets probably sold out at Denmark open 2022 where there was a presale). I then considered buying 7 individual one-day tickets but it never materialized.

I had actually given up on going when a friend who had gotten hold of 6 all-week tickets with good seats contacted me and offered me a ticket. It turned out to be a group trip with 7 days of badminton and after the WC, some days of touristing in Copenhagen.

I will comment on selected matches later but decided to write about the boring parts first.

Royal arena where the tournament was staged is a modern arena with capacity for about 10000 spectators when organized for badminton. Comfort when seated was adequate. The first 2-3 days it wasn’t too crowded but then it started filling up and for the weekend the arena was absolutely packed with fans.

The atmosphere was absolutely amazing, it beats all the tournaments I have attended before. One thing that was spectacular was the players entrance to the courts before the matches: being elevated up to the platform with their flag and some basic data being displayed on the big screen behind them and then walking down the stair on the red carpet onto court to the wild cheer of the crowd.

However, a packed arena does bring some inconveniences when it comes to one thing: food. There were too few food stands inside the arena and the selections of food was limited. Besides that, it could be a real hassle to order and get your food. Except for what can be classified as snacks (popcorn, soda, candy etc.) what you could get seemed to be hotdogs of two types, pizza slices and some other thing which I don’t know what it was. To make an order you approached the desk and paid, then got a receipt with a number. Then you had to wait (together with 50+ people) for the staff to call out your number in Danish(!) before you could pick up the food. This was very rapid the first 2-3 days when the stadium was relatively empty but it was a nightmare in the later stages of the tournament.

There were possibilities to exit the arena and walk 5 min to a Burger King (where the service collapsed during the weekend from badminton fan overload) or walk 10 min to a large nearby shopping mall with a large variety of restaurants. I had preferred to be able to grab a quick bite of food inside the arena to going out eating and missing matches.

Outside the arena there were some tents selling Yonex and Victor stuff, I cannot recall that I saw any Li-Ning tent. Inside the arena Badminton Denmark had a small souvenir shop. Actually, there were fewer shops selling different merchandise than I had expected.

During the tournament days we stayed at a hotel within walking distance from Royal Arena and after the conclusion of the tournament we moved to a hotel in central Copenhagen to do some touristing (which I will not cover in my report).

The area surrounding Royal Arena is quite boring I must say, architecture was more or less awful, luckily we spent little time outside the arena during match days.

Four courts were used day 1-4, two courts for day 5 (QF) and one court for day 6 and 7 (SF and F). Hawk-Eye was available on ct 1&2. The stadium could be very noisy when Danish players played, the crowd went crazy. Ear-plugs were needed.