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It might be surprising to some people that badminton players can make quite a bit of money. While badminton may not be as lucrative as some other sports like basketball or soccer, top badminton players still have net worths in the tens of millions.
Badminton players create wealth in several ways – such as through sponsors/funding, prize money, advertisements, and their own businesses. In this post, we will be focusing on just prize money since all of the other categories don’t have publicly available information for us to look up.
What we did was look at the top 2 players/teams in each badminton discipline and calculated how much prize money they earned in 2019. We have a summary below of all the players/teams sorted by most prize money and then we broke down how they made the money in the sections below.
Max
$531,125
Min
$219,209
Average
$403,222.10
Median
$400,120
Standard Deviation
$101,303.14
Statistics for how much the top 2 players of each discipline make.
Prize money for the top 2 players of each discipline. Rankings as of 7/3/2020.
Wow, that’s a lot of money! Kento Momota leads the charge with $531,125 in tournament winnings. You can also think of the prize money as a rough indication of how dominant the players are in their respective disciplines. For example, Kento Momota is very dominant in men’s singles while Tai Tzu Ying is less dominant in women’s singles as shown by the prize money difference.
Keep in mind that all of this data is pre-tax money and that the prize money split is the same between the two different singles disciplines and is also the same between the three doubles categories. The doubles categories has a larger pot than the singles’ pots but will have to be split any prize money between two players.
If you would like to see how prize money is broken down, take a look at BWF’s official document here. And below, we have a table indicating the level of the tournaments. Lastly, also keep in mind that not all tournaments have prize money, such as the BWF World Championships, but is extremely prestigious. We wrote all about the most prestigious tournaments that players all over the world want to win in What are the Most Prestigious Badminton Tournaments? We also wrote about the BWF World Tour and how much money is in the prize pools in Major Badminton Tournaments and Prize Money, the BWF World Tour Explained.
Level 1
Level 2-3
Level 4+
HSBC World Tour Finals
Blibli Indonesia Open
Asia Championships
Celcom Axiata Malaysia Open
Barfoot & Thompson New Zealand Open
Daihatsu Yonex Japan Open
Crown Group Australian Open
Danisa Denmark Open
Daihatsu Indonesia Masters
Fuzhou China Open
German Open
Toyota Thailand Open
Korea Open
Victor China Open
Perodua Malaysia Masters
Yonex All England Open
Princess Sirivannavari Thailand Masters
Yonex French Open
Singapore Open
Yonex Chinese Taipei Open
Yonex German Open
Yonex Swiss Open
Yonex Sunrise Hong Kong Open
Yonex Sunrise India Open
BWF Tournament Levels
Men’s Singles Rank 1: Kento Momota
Tournament
Placement
Prize Money (USD)
HSBC World Tour Finals
1
$120,000
Yonex All England Open
1
$70,000
Victor China Open
1
$70,000
Victor China Open
1
$70,000
Danisa Denmark Open
1
$54,250
Daihatsu Yonex Japan Open
1
$52,500
Fuzhou China Open
1
$49,000
Asia Championships
1
$30,000
Korea Open
1
$30,000
Singapore Open
1
$26,625
Daihatsu Indonesia Masters
2
$13,300
Yonex German Open
1
$11,250
Yonex French Open
8 – 15
$2,250
Blibli Indonesia Open
16 – 31
$1,250
Celcom Axiata Malaysia Open
16 – 31
$700
Total
$531,125
Kento Momota 2019 Winnings
Women’s Singles Rank 1: Tai Tzu Ying
Tournament
Placement
Prize Money (USD)
HSBC World Tour Finals
2
$60,000
Danisa Denmark Open
1
$54,250
Celcom Axiata Malaysia Open
1
$49,000
Yonex All England Open
2
$34,000
Victor China Open
2
$34,000
Singapore Open
1
$26,625
Blibli Indonesia Open
3 – 4
$10,500
Yonex French Open
3 – 4
$10,500
Fuzhou China Open
3 – 4
$9,800
Korea Open
3 – 4
$5,800
Daihatsu Yonex Japan Open
5 – 8
$4,125
Perodua Malaysia Masters
5 – 8
$2,100
Total
$307,700
Tai Tzu Ying 2019 Winnings
Men’s Doubles Rank 1: Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo
Tournament
Placement
Prize Money (USD)
Blibli Indonesia Open
1
$92,500
Victor China Open
1
$74,000
Danisa Denmark Open
1
$57,350
Daihatsu Yonex Japan Open
1
$55,500
Yonex French Open
1
$55,500
Fuzhou China Open
1
$51,800
HSBC World Tour Finals
3 – 4
$30,000
Perodua Malaysia Masters
1
$27,650
Daihatsu Indonesia Masters
1
$27,650
Asia Championships
2
$15,200
Singapore Open
3 – 4
$4,970
Celcom Axiata Malaysia Open
5 – 8
$3,850
Korea Open
5 – 8
$2,400
Yonex Sunrise Hong Kong Open
5 – 8
$2,400
Toyota Thailand Open
5 – 8
$2,100
Total
$502,870
Per Player
$251,435
Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo 2019 Winnings
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This is quite interesting to find. How did you collect information for players and their winnings? Do you look for this using script or browse then copy-paste? All the best.
Thank you for your comment Fernanda. The information is completely available on BWF’s website. We don’t use any scripts to get the information, but that is certainly possible.
This is quite interesting to find. How did you collect information for players and their winnings? Do you look for this using script or browse then copy-paste? All the best.
Thank you for your comment Fernanda. The information is completely available on BWF’s website. We don’t use any scripts to get the information, but that is certainly possible.