Pom-pom girls strut their stuff, pop music reverberates around the arena and a "kiss cam" trains its sights on the next unsuspecting couple. Sounds like a basketball or baseball match? Think again: this is badminton, and probably not as many imagined it.
It is all part of an attempt by the sport's governing body to attract and keep new fans, the younger the better.
"Increasingly we see ourselves as part of the entertainment business and not only the sports-entertainment business," Thomas Lund, secretary general of the Badminton World Federation (BWF), told AFP.
"That's a conscious choice... We are competing for people's time and attention -- on television, on social media, online," the Dane said on the sidelines of the World Championships in Nanjing, China.
"We want to engage them in badminton and make them think badminton." For spectators, that means more than just loud music and the fancy spotlights that rake over the audience between matches.
It is also the thudding "heartbeat" sound that plays to the crowd during a video decision review, ratcheting up the tension, and players walking onto court like rock stars.
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"The big thing for us at the moment is to ensure that it is not really about the court or the surroundings, it is really about the players," said Lund, a former Olympian in the sport.
"It is about... how you present the players, these players that people think of as stars, present them as stars.
"It's a theatre thing."
- More money -
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