The BWF uses your personal data broadly for reasons related to the administration of badminton around the world. If you are a member of the badminton community, this may be done 1) to facilitate your participation in and keep records of tournaments, training courses, development activities and meetings; 2) to keep records of tournaments, training courses, development activities and meetings; 3) to promote badminton; and 4) to safeguard the integrity of the sport.

We share data on a need-to-know basis with other organisations involved in the organisation of tournaments, including national badminton associations or tournament organisers. We also have a number of service providers with whom it shares relevant data.

If you are a player, we may process sensitive personal data about you, in particular data related to your health, for the purpose of our anti-doping programme. Such use is described in the Privacy Notice for Anti-Doping.

Our General Data Privacy Policy sets out more details of this processing, including details of your data protection rights, including your right to object to certain processing.

This notice describes how we, the Badminton World Federation (also referred to as “BWF”, “we” or “us”), will make use of your data when you interact with us, either as a member of the badminton community (players, their entourage, officials, participants in BWF activities, etc.), or as a member of the general public.

It also describes your data protection rights, including a right to object to some of the processing which we carry out. More information about your rights, and how to exercise them, is set out in the “What rights do you have?” section below.

For example, in the Privacy Notice for Anti-Doping.

We may collect and process personal data about you when you interact with us.  This includes:

• Identification information: your name, gender and date of birth;
• Contact information: your home address, email address, and phone number;
• Sports-related information: your member association membership, records of sport performance, ranking records, disciplinary/grievance information, attendance at competitions or at education activities;
• Development-related information: your progress and status on educational platforms run by us;
• Media-related information: for example, photos or videos taken at BWF-sanctioned tournaments;
• Biographical information: for members of the badminton community, we may compile biographical information to draw up your profile;
• Integrity-related data: betting account information and personal data provided by betting and betting-monitoring companies, open-source social data, including data obtaining from open source media;
• Marketing preferences: including any consents you have given us;
• Website browser: information related to the browser or device you use to access our website.

In addition to the above, we may collect and process the following personal data, which is considered more sensitive:

Anti-Doping related data (for players): health-related data, whereabouts information are examples of personal data we collect for the purpose of our anti-doping programme. For more information, please review the Privacy Notice for Anti-Doping.

Classification-related data (for para badminton players): medical data, which is used for the purpose of classification. For more information, please review the Privacy Notice for Para Badminton Classification.

We receive information about members of the badminton community from their respective badminton associations and continental confederations. This information includes name, gender, age/date of birth, contact information, as well as sports-related data.

In relation to integrity, we may receive information from betting and betting-monitoring organisations. This may include information about your betting accounts and betting activities.

We process this personal data for the following purposes:

– To fulfil a contract, or take steps linked to a contract: this is relevant where you enter a competition we run. This includes:

• Verifying your identity;
• Communicating with you;

– As required, to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, in particular:

• we will use your information to provide products and services you have requested, and respond to any comments or complaints you may send us;
• we monitor use of our websites and online services, and use your information to help us monitor, improve and protect our products, content, services and websites, both online and offline;
• we use your sports- and media-related information to keep records and publish performances in matches for media and fans to look at. We also use this data and conduct data analysis studies to better understand event attendance and trends within the sport;
• we use your development-related information to run certification programmes and compile statistics;
• we use information you provide to personalise our website, products or services for you;
• we monitor BWF activities to prevent, investigate and/or report attempts to undermine badminton’s integrity, fraud, terrorism, misrepresentation, security incidents or crime, in accordance with applicable law;
• for our integrity programme, we use diversified sources of information, including contact information, player sports-related information (such as match performance, record, playing pattern), media data taken at venues, as well as traditional integrity-related data.
• we use information you provide to investigate any complaints received from you or from others, about our website or our products or services;
• we will use data in connection with legal claims, compliance, regulatory and investigative purposes as necessary (including disclosure of such information in connection with legal process or litigation);
• for our anti-doping programme, we use anti-doping related data (except Therapeutics Use Exemptions requests, which are processed on the basis of consent).

– Where you give us consent:

• where we ask you for consent, we will use the data for the purpose which we explain at that time.

– For purposes which are required by law:

• where we need parental consent to provide online services to children under 16. However, most of our websites are not designed for children under 16.
• in response to requests by government or law enforcement authorities conducting an investigation.

We have balanced our interests with your individual interests, ensuring that you would reasonably expect us to use data in a particular way (“balancing tests”). You can obtain information on any of our balancing tests by contacting us using the details set out later in this notice.

Wherever we rely on your consent, you will always be able to withdraw that consent, although we may have other legal grounds for processing your data for other purposes, such as those set out above.

In some cases, we are able to send you direct marketing without your consent, where we rely on our legitimate interests.  You have an absolute right to opt-out of direct marketing, or profiling we carry out for direct marketing, at any time. You can do this by following the instructions in the communication where this is an electronic message, or by contacting us using the details set out below.

If you are a member of the badminton community, we may share your identification data with relevant member associations, continental confederations, tournament organizers including multi-sport games organisers or local hosts, in order to facilitate your general participation in tournaments or activities.

Biographical data about players and officials may also be published on the BWF website, for documentation of the sport and its governance.

Personal data may be shared with government authorities and/or law enforcement officials if required for the purposes above, if mandated by law or if required for the legal protection of our legitimate interests in compliance with applicable laws.

Personal data will also be shared with third party service providers, who will process it on behalf of BWF for the purposes identified above. In particular, we use third party providers of IT services, TV production services, promotional advice, tournament organisation, data analytics, and legal and accounting services.

BWF is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) where, as a general rule, its data is stored. However:

• Player performance data and profile information is stored in the Netherlands;
• BWF websites are hosted on servers based in Singapore;

As an international sports federation, we have to transfer personal data between Malaysia and other countries, both inside and outside the European Economic Area, for purposes related to the administration of badminton. These transfers concern only individuals who participate in badminton-related tournaments, events or activities and are necessary to allow these individuals to take part in those. BWF ensures that these data transfers are done in a secure fashion, and on a strict need-to-know basis.

Due to applicable data privacy laws, your rights may vary according to where you live. While the BWF seeks to treat every user in the same way, non-European users may not be able to enforce certain rights stated in the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

You have the right to ask us for a copy of your personal data; to correct, delete or restrict (stop any active) processing of your personal data; and to obtain the personal data you provide to us for a contract or with your consent in a structured, machine readable format, and to ask us to share (port) this data to another controller.

In addition, you may also be able to object to the processing of your personal data in some circumstances (in particular, where we don’t have to process the data to meet a contractual or other legal requirement, or where we are using the data for direct marketing).

These rights may be limited, for example if fulfilling your request would reveal personal data about another person, where they would infringe the rights of a third party (including our rights) or if you ask us to delete information which we are required by law to keep or have compelling legitimate interests in keeping.

To exercise any of these rights, or to obtain other information, such as a copy of a legitimate interests balancing test, you can get in touch with us using the details set out below. If you have unresolved concerns, you may have the right to complain to an EU data protection authority where you live, work or where you believe a breach may have occurred.

We hope that we can satisfy queries you may have about the way we process your data. If you have any concerns about how we process your data, or would like to opt out of direct marketing, you can get in touch at [email protected] or by writing to the Privacy Officer, Badminton World Federation, Unit No 1, Level 29, Naza Tower, No 10 Persiaran KLCC, 50088 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

As a general rule, we keep data for as long as it is relevant to us.

Identification & contact information: we retain this information for 5 years from your last interaction with us.

Bank Transactions: we retain records of banking transactions for 7 years and this including expense claim transactions for individuals undertaking duties and / or travel for the BWF.

Sports-related information: we retain information related to your records and rankings indefinitely for archival and historical purposes. Information about your disciplinary record related to competition and tournaments will be destroyed after 5 years from your last date of participation in a BWF sanctioned tournament or five years after any period of ineligibility ends.

Development-related information: we will retain this type of information indefinitely, to keep of your certification status.

Media-related information: We will retain this type of information indefinitely, for archival reasons.

Biographical information: we will retain this type of information indefinitely for archival and historical reasons.

Marketing preferences: this information will be kept for as long as it is relevant to respect your preferences, including of us not sending you any communication.

Integrity: we retain this information for 10 years from your last participation in badminton if you are a player, or 10 years from when the information is collected if you are not a player. We reserve the right to keep the information for longer if it becomes relevant in the course of an investigation or if this is subject to a decision of a hearing panel.

Yes, the BWF has specific privacy notices about its use of personal information in relation to technical areas. These are listed below:

• Privacy Notice for Anti-Doping (4 April 2022)
• Privacy Notice for Para Badminton Classification (12 June 2023)
• Privacy Notice for Vetting Process (22 January 2024)