Taipei Open canceled

JAKARTA (Agencies): The Chinese Taipei Badminton Open organizers -- which traditionally follows the Korea Open as one of the season openers in January -- have announced that the event had to be shelved due to lack of financial support and its proximity to the Lunar New Year holidays at that time.

"This again proves the need for the IBF to take radical action to improve the perception and image of the game and develop globally recognized players," said the International Badminton Federation (IBF) Director of Events, Vanessa Freeman, as quoted by worldbadminton.net on Wednesday.

In 2000, several Grand Prix series -- Singapore Open, China Open and Hong Kong Open -- had to be canceled due to sponsorship problems.

"If there is any good to come out of these cancellations it must be that people will now wake up to the fact that we need to move the sport on and make some changes - no-one likes change, but the whole image is reality in today's global market place."