Top badminton officials were due to answer criticism on Thursday after the first round of the prestigious All England championships lasted nearly 17 hours.
First-round play over-ran by some four hours, ending at 0254 local time (GMT) on Thursday in front of a virtually empty stadium.
Leading figures from Badminton England and the Badminton World Federation were due to hold a media conference to explain the over-run.
They will need to examine why four courts were used instead of five and why not enough time was planned for each match.
Former title winner Peter Gade of Denmark was the highest-profile loser, bowing out in his final appearance at the tournament to English champion Rajiv Ouseph.
The pair started their match at 0110 with Ouseph triumphing 17-21 21-16 21-14 to claim possibly the biggest win of his career, with hardly anyone watching.
Gade, 35, All England champion in 1999, said: "No matter how crazy it sounds we sort of expected this could happen because we saw the way they planned the tournament. Thirty-five minutes for each game: that's impossible."
It was a sad end to Gade's long and distinguished All England career. The Dane is retiring in the next year after playing a couple more tournaments following the London Olympics.
"I have so many good memories here and to finish off beaten in the first round at 0220 is not what I had hoped," he said.
China's world number two women's singles player Wang Xin was another major casualty, losing the 80th and final match of the day to unseeded South Korean Sung Ji-hyun in 31 minutes.
Organisers were undone by a glut of three-set matches which meant big names such as titleholder Lee Chong Wei, world champion Lin Dan and former Olympic champion Taufik Hidayat found themselves playing approaching midnight and beyond.