DEPENDING on the success of the World Tour's Asian leg in January, the Badminton World Federation (BWF) may adopt a similar cluster format for the new 2021 season.
As Covid-19 continues to be a major concern, tournaments that are part of the Tokyo Olympics qualification are likely to be grouped together in selected countries.
A total of 24 tournaments this year have been postponed or cancelled due to the pandemic.
If everything goes well, the Olympic qualifying will end on May 2.
However, all this would depend on the success of the Asian leg in Bangkok, Thailand, which consist of two Super 1000 events and the 2020 season-ending World Tour Finals.
"We are looking into whether we can replicate that into further clusters next year. That's part of the exercise we're going through at the moment.
"This could be a blueprint on how we can conduct tournaments in an Asian leg, and how we can move that on in further cluster tournaments.
"But there are financial complexities that we are working to get through," said BWF secretary-general Thomas Lund on Tuesday during a virtual press conference.
Lund also noted that the Asian leg was moved from November this year due to time constraints.
While other sports around the world have resumed over the last couple of months, the BWF have struggled to get things rolling.
The Denmark Open on Oct 13-18 will be the only tournament this year since the suspension of the World Tour calendar in March.
"The challenges are not as big if you don't have to cross so many national borders. In our normal tournament structure, we have 300 to 400 players coming from 40 to 60 countries.
"The big challenge here is that we need them getting out of their countries, and then getting into the host countries with quarantine restrictions and so on, which are being dealt with differently in different places.
"That creates complexity in getting that many people together in one location. That is what we are trying to bridge by creating this cluster in Thailand, where we can play several tournaments in the same location," added Lund.
Among the notable tournaments that were postponed this year include the Malaysia, German, Swiss, India, and Singapore Opens, as well as the intercontinental events in Asia and Europe.