Three months after the end of the Orleans Masters, Franck Laurent, the tournament director, took stock of the last edition and presented the main lines of the 2023 edition.
The return of the public (8,000 spectators throughout the week), the badminton village at Parc Pasteur, growing media coverage (477,000 hours of viewing on Youtube) and more anecdotally, the implementation of a dedicated application . There were many reasons for satisfaction for Franck Laurent and his team, recently brought together at the FRAC. Not to mention the sportsman, with in particular the second consecutive victory of Toma Junior Popov, the best tricolor of the moment. “We hope he can repeat this feat in 2023, but the competition will be even tougher”, prophesied Franck Laurent, who did not fail to mention the transition to the Super 300 rank of the Orleans tournament for the period 2023- 2026.
“We are obviously very happy that the BWF (the International Badminton Federation) has granted us such confidence; and I sincerely think that it’s a chance for Orléans, a great opportunity to promote the city and the region,” assured the boss of the Orléans tournament, echoing Thomas Renault. The deputy mayor for sports said he was “very happy that the tournament could go up a level”, assuring that the city would “as always support the event”.
Prize-money on the rise
The next edition will have its share of novelties, from the prize-money ($240,000 instead of $90,000), to media coverage (setting up a television production on Saturday, the day of the semi-finals), via “the ‘improvement of the player experience’ in terms of catering, transport and warm-up.
It remains to be seen now where the tournament will take place, at the Palais des Sports or at Co’Met, “a room that corresponds to the standing of such an event, and comparable to what is done elsewhere in the world”, according to Franck Laurent .
