"Crowds" at the WTTTC 2016

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[ this post is a follow-up about the amount of people attending table tennis tournaments, which some people were mentioning in another post about the Chinese WTTC Trials ]

I had the chance to attend the last World Team Table Tennis Championships in Kuala Lumpur. It was exactly 1 year ago. I attended the whole competition, and I was quite surprised to see that most of the days the stadium was almost empty. This is a random photo I took those days:

IMG_20160302_114227043.jpg

Days passed, and the semifinals day the thing improved a bit, as one of the sides of the stadium got some more people. I would estimate the total occupancy level at: 20% at most.

And the finals day came! Here is what people saw on TV:

finals.jpg

WOW! Full house for the finals, screaming crowd... Well, let me tell you what I discovered.

As you may remember, the WTTTC were sponsored by a chinese firm named "Perfect". Two days later, I travelled to a different city in Malaysia (George Town), and I saw some of the buses that had been moving players and umpires at the WTTTC in Kuala Lumpur, but this time, they had changed their labels from 2016 Perfect WTTTC to 2016 Perfect Anual Meeting. They were carrying loooads of people with white and red tshirts (can you spot them in the finals picture??), and there was a big party there with music and food for all of them.

What's my guess? "Perfect", the company sponsoring the championship, was bringing some (or all) of his employees to Malaysia for an anual meeting they might be doing every year, and they took advantage of the WTTTC to give them free tickets. This way, the stadium was full, the impression people got on TV was fantastic and the company workers spent a wonderful vacation in Malaysia.

My concern is: how many people would have attended the finals if this thing hadn't happened. It was the WTTTC finals, not a minor event, so you would expected having a crowded stadium.. It seems that not even in China's trials today the stadium was full, so... I would say we have a lot to improve regarding the global marketing.
 
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I think the people get more and more tired of the chinese domination. However a lot depends on the location, this year's WTTC in Germany will be packed. 8.000 seats arena was sold out on the last three days already in January.

They are trying out a lot of things to market it better already, the whole trials is set up more like a show than a sports event, matches only being bo3 is partly because Liu wants the players to start off strongly but it's mostly to be more entertaining I think.
 
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