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The price of badminton has increased by 30% to 40% in half a year. The price of three buckets of badminton is almost as high as one gram of gold? Recently, topics such as "the price of badminton has increased" have become a hot search on social media.

Badminton is easy to learn, has low venue requirements, and has strong social attributes, and has a strong mass base in my country. The "Mass Sports Behavior and Consumption Research Report" released by the China Sporting Goods Industry Association shows that in 2023, among the 26 surveyed cities, badminton ranked second in popular sports, second only to running.

"Why has the price of badminton gone up like weight?" Since last year, badminton prices have been rising again and again, and many badminton lovers have felt deeply. Mr. Wang, a badminton enthusiast, did some calculations for the reporter: "A two-hour badminton game will use up almost a bucket of badminton. If you play four games a week, and the price of each bucket of badminton has increased by 50 yuan, you will have to spend an extra 200 yuan just on buying the balls. I have become a badminton 'assassin'!"

While prices are rising, badminton is in short supply. The reporter searched several online shopping platforms and found that many brands of badminton were out of stock. The sales staff explained: "Because there is not much inventory, it sells out quickly." A badminton dealer said that since the end of last year, it has received four price adjustment notices, and the overall price of badminton is about 50% higher than before the price increase.

According to industry insiders, the skyrocketing price of badminton is mainly due to the reduction in production of goose feathers and duck feathers used to make badminton.

The feathers used in badminton mainly come from the feathers on the wings of ducks and geese. It usually takes 16 feathers to make a badminton, which consumes an average of 1.14 ducks or 0.8 geese. However, according to monitoring statistics from the China Animal Husbandry Association, in 2023, the output of commercial meat ducks in my country will be 4.218 billion, and the output of commercial geese will be 515 million, which will be 660 million and 119 million less than in 2019, respectively.

Not only that, under the trend of cost and efficiency, farmers are more inclined to choose varieties with short marketing cycle and low breeding cost, which further leads to the shortage of badminton raw materials.

On one end is the ever-decreasing supply of badminton raw materials, and on the other end is the ever-increasing enthusiasm for sports consumption.

In 2020, the proportion of people who regularly participate in physical exercise in my country reached 37.2%. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of this year, the overall retail sales of sports and entertainment products in China increased by 11.2% year-on-year, far higher than the 3.7% growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods.

The badminton industry chain is also developing at an accelerated pace under this background. According to Qichacha data, there are about 13,000 badminton-related companies in my country, of which 394 were newly registered in the first half of this year, an increase of more than 10% over the same period last year.

The price of badminton continues to soar, and industry insiders say that developing artificial synthetic balls with smaller price fluctuations should be one of the key areas of exploration for the industry.

Currently, more and more nylon badminton products are entering the market. Carbon sound balls, known as the "black technology" of badminton, are regarded by many badminton players as the first choice for "substitutes" for natural badminton due to their stable flight and durability. As for the problems of poor feel of artificial balls that are most "complained" by "experts", some domestic manufacturers have begun to improve their craftsmanship and enhance the technical content to provide players with more abundant high-quality consumer choices.

"Sports provide the stage, and the economy performs the show." As an important part of residents' life service consumption, sports consumption still requires all ends of the industrial chain to work together in a multi-pronged manner and exert efforts in the same direction, continuously launching products and services with good prices and high quality, fully meeting the people's diversified sports consumption needs, and "igniting" the surging enthusiasm of sports consumption.

Source: People's Daily WeChat Official Account